


Me and You

by Firenation



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, F/M, Kissing Booth AU, M/M, the Delgado-Hales are goals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 14:44:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15665316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firenation/pseuds/Firenation
Summary: “It’s not your job to monitor my dating life. I will tell Laura. I will.”“She’d agree that someone’s got to look out for you,” Derek huffs, like he’s doing Stiles a favour. A goddamn favour.“The days of you controlling my dating life are over.” Stiles is seething.“We’ll see about that.” Derek’s got that infuriatingly hot smirk on his face, Stiles can hear it.





	Me and You

**Author's Note:**

> I've been trying to crank out this beast for sooo long. 
> 
> I love Sterek, I really do, and as soon as I saw this film I JUST KNEW I HAD TO DO THIS. 
> 
> Trigger Warnings at the end!
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy this as much as I do? idk, I'm just such trash for Sterek.
> 
> Some slight divergences to the film in places because I wanted to and some bits in the movie just pissed me off. 
> 
> Title from Kelsea Ballerini's Legends which is an amazing song, highly recommend to you all!

Scott Delgado-Hale and Stiles Stilinski were born on the same day at the exact same time in Beacon Hills, North California.

Their moms, Melissa Delgado-Hale and Grażyna (call me Grace) Stilinski had been best friends since third grade and couldn’t really believe their luck. The boys shared a birth announcement in the local paper and from then on out, shared everything. Stiles was the unofficial fifth Delgado-Hale child (the second youngest, he likes to think, as they both agree that Stiles edged out just a second before) and Scott was the golden boy in the Stilinski family.

For their fifth birthdays, they had a clown for their joint party. Scott cried and Stiles shouted at the clown. Suffice to say, that was the last party Marty the Clown ever wanted to book.

When they were seven, Scott got the scooter they’d both asked for, and Stiles got a snowboard, ready for that year’s surprise Stilinski winter holiday.

The holiday was cancelled because his mom got sick. They ended up camping out in hospital seats amongst fluffy hospital sheets and his mom fainting, even though no one could explain why. It took the doctors a few weeks to say the word cancer, and Stiles spent hours that he was supposed to be sleeping researching what that exactly was.

When Stiles was eight, he and Scott had their first big falling out. Stiles broke his leg while trying to ride Scott’s scooter and Scott bought him an ice cream to apologise. All four Hale children sign his cast, Laura drawing a cartoon strip about Stilinskis saving the day. His dad takes a photo of it and it stays on their fridge for a long time.

Stiles declares that he wants to try out for the track team, mostly for long distance running at age eleven. Cora joins him and teaches him how to run properly, instead of hurting himself. He can’t get away from his mom’s illness that easily, but he can make use of that extra twitchy energy he has. This is until his ADD gets diagnosed not long after that, and Ritalin gets prescribed. The running habit sticks with him, though, and he gets really good. He gets better at other sports over the years, adding lacrosse with Scott, football and swim team to the list.

Stiles loses his mom at age eleven and a half. He speaks at the funeral and doesn’t make it through without crying. Turns out, he hates crying in front of people. The Delgado-Hale family turn up in full force, Melissa, Talia, Laura, Cora, Derek and Scott. They bring a huge wreath of hydrangeas, which were his mom’s favourite. It’s the first time he remembers Derek hugging him, tight enough that it’s a little hard to breathe, with his face buried in Stiles’s hair.

At age twelve, the Delgado-Hales decide to start up a tradition with the Stilinskis; on August 8th, his mom’s birthday, they have a picnic. Stiles’s mom and dad’s first date was a picnic, months later they got engaged over one, and Melissa and Grace used to have picnics when they were kids. This becomes a yearly tradition even when Laura, then Cora, go off to college, and they always come back for it.

Stiles hated middle school so he gets his dad to transfer him to the private school on the outskirts of town. It doesn’t exactly hurt things that Laura, Cora and Derek go there, though Laura’s already left the year before Stiles and Scott start.

Scott got his dream car at age sixteen. Stiles could’ve had his mom’s Jeep, if he wanted, but he couldn’t. He got this tight uncomfortable feeling in his chest whenever his dad talked about it. He figured, he couldn’t save her, he doesn’t deserve the jeep. That was fair.

 ****

It’s the day before the start of Scott and Stiles’s Junior year. Stiles finished off the reading list days ago, and he’s soaking up the last remnants of the summer sun by the poolside at the Delgado-Hale place.

He misses Laura and Cora at times like these. It’s just not the same dive-bombing their pool when they’re not there, attempting to drown Derek. The frownmaster himself has been away all summer at baseball camp, probably brooding. Definitely brooding.

Stiles’s phone sounds, and he swears Laura must be psychic, because she’s sent him a picture of a nude guy with a sign proclaiming that he’s Jesus on the Subway.

“Scott, I miss your sister,” he calls out. Scott’s reaching his chin up goals on the bar tucked away opposite the pool. He thinks he hears an agreeing sound but he’s distracted by the entrance of a Mr Derek Delgado-Hale.

The bastard has the audacity to come back from baseball camp all tanned and bulky and grumpy as ever. Illegal. A travesty. Stiles will never admit to anyone, but he has missed the shit out of Derek. They usually text from time to time but the cell connection was awful at camp, so it’s been a very quiet summer.

Derek startles when he sees Stiles and instantly looks like he’s swallowed a Dorito whole.

“When did you get all…big?” Derek sounds annoyed, which is per standard.

Derek has yet to grow out of the habit of seeing Stiles as this little kid brother that breaks stuff with Scott and sometimes hangs around the pool working on his laps with loud music when Derek’s trying to study.

Stiles doesn’t know how he gets so much love from the other Delgado-Hale siblings, when Derek just plain hates his guts. Case in point, Laura makes him care packages and posts them from where she’s at college at Columbia, and Cora sends him monthly postcards from her Year Abroad in Peru. Scott loves him more than Derek, he’s pretty sure.

“When you were away at baseball camp, douchebag,” Scott stops mid chin up and drops to the ground. “Stop staring at him.”

“Where’s my athletic cup?” Derek snaps. The line of his shoulders looks suddenly tense, and Stiles wonders if his infamously bad temper is going to make an appearance.

“I’ve been using it for _all_ my varsity sports,” Scott snaps back. As always, Stiles thinks, they manage to bring out the worst in each other. It’s like a gift.

Derek pretends to laugh, and while they boggle, aims a baseball at Scott’s chest with a snap of his wrist that Stiles is definitely going to fantasise about, later, when he’s alone in bed.

But right now, Scott gets winded and falls in the pool and immediately starts breathing weird from the chlorine. Stiles has to dive in and rescue him and lecture Derek about pool safety and asthma for the rest of the afternoon. Derek looks contrite and embarrassed and keeps hissing, “ _don’t tell moms.”_ He keeps frowning at where Stiles is still in his bathing suit, but it’s a hundred degrees out, the man can get over his precious, prudish ways.

He knows Derek feels bad when he gets them McDonald’s without being prompted to. The guy, somehow, always remembers Stiles’s order of the month. This month it’s a toffee sundae, medium fries, and a 20 McNugget box. Thank god for weight lifting.

 

In hindsight, the incident that sparks it all is Stiles’s pants ripping.

Stiles searches under his bed for the pen that he really likes when he hears the sound that makes his blood run ice cold; a _rip_ , soft, but there. Day ruining, as it turns out.

It’s right across the ass crack and he knew, just _knew_ , that bumping up his squat count would have consequences.

Scott’s whiny car horn sounds, and the words _shit on it_ echo in his mind.

“Dad, where are my other pair of school pants?” Stiles yells downstairs at his dad.

“At the dry-cleaners,” his dad hollers back. “Scott’s here!”

“Thanks for that vital bit of information, dad, I was so unaware,” Stiles yells back, going sweaty. He has two minutes to find a new pair of pants, given the traffic they will inevitably get stuck in. They’ll be late if he doesn’t hurry the fuck up and he doesn’t plan on starting Junior year with a detention.

As it turns out, he does get a detention on the first day, and it’s so much worse than he thinks it’d be.

Stiles rummages through his wardrobe to find multiple pairs of dark blue jeans that are strictly against the uniform code, and then right at the back, dark grey school logo’d stretchy shorts from the ninth-grade dance show that Lydia and Erica had bullied him into. The booty shorts are the opposite of regulation, but they are school colours, and he’s pretty sure they are allowed shorts in hot weather, technically. He debates calling in sick than wear the booty shorts in September.

“Ninth grade shorts on an eleventh-grade body…great.” Stiles groans in complaint before trying to get them on. There is cursing and some lying down, and then they’re on. They show everything. He’s pretty sure there’s a spot on his ass that he can see better in the shorts than the mirror.  

He hurtles down the stairs and can feel his balls being squeezed by the shorts when he picks up his bag. Knowing his luck, these’ll rip too, and then he’ll be stuck.

His dad looks horrified. He’s stopped with a cup of coffee halfway to his mouth.

“Dad, my other pants ripped. This is literally all I have.” Stiles wheedles, picking up a piece of toast. His dad doesn’t even argue when he drinks the OJ straight from the carton.

“I suppose I can drop your clean ones at school later,” his dad grumbles.

“Thank god,” Stiles bumps his dad’s shoulder with a fist and sprints out to Scott’s car.

Scott makes a sound that really belongs on the plains of Africa, with the hyenas.

“Don’t say anything…my pants ripped.”

Scott is trying not to die with laughter, he thinks, but being the amazing best friend that he is, just starts the car.

“It’s a bit short notice to wear those on your first day, isn’t it?”

Scott laughs to himself. Stiles shakes his head and wonders if it’s too late to swap Scott for a newer model.

 

The parking lot is ferociously busy; the way you’d expect it to be on the first day of school. Everyone’s excited to see their friends after the long break, and they’re loitering in the parking lot right up until the bell goes off, apparently. It’s the perfect day to expose a huge change after summer break, Stiles thinks. Dreads to think.

He hops over the car door and nearly brains himself on the asphalt. Scott needs to get that broken handle looked at, asap, he reminds himself to bug Derek about it when they get home. His royal highness won’t dare to look at Stiles during school hours, as per.

The creep just sits at the back of the room during Homeroom, the only period they share, and Stiles isn’t exactly in the habit of turning around and looking at him. Call it war flashbacks from when they were kids and Derek pants’d Scott at all opportunities. 

The point being, Derek doesn’t look at Stiles, and he likes it. Loves it, actually. However, today, every member of the student body in the parking lot _is_ watching them.

“Why is everyone looking at me?” Stiles mutters out of the corner of his mouth. He doesn’t play a central role in the football team for the reason that this is uncomfortable as hell. Matthew ‘the Quarterback’ Rodriguez, on the other hand, thrives off it. Stiles just gets clumsy.

“You’re wearing booty shorts in September.”

“It’s all I had.” Stiles hisses.

“Booty shorts, Stiles. Booty. Shorts.” Scott taps him on the arm and Stiles starts praying that his dad will drop off his shorts before first period. He messages his dad quickly with a lot of prayer emojis. He’s hoping his dad won’t just find it amusing.

“Nice ass, Stilinski,” yells some Neanderthal from the hockey team, Ethan something, he thinks.

“Get lost, asshole,” Scott snaps in a wonderful imitation of Cora, and Stiles’s heart does things. Really.  

To avoid violence on the first day, Stiles takes the high route, and doesn’t talk to stupid.

However, when said stupid Neanderthal slaps his ass, hard enough for it to immediately start burning, Stiles thinks it needs to be handled. Scott whirls round, looking furious and like he wants to inflict some damage, too. Unfortunately, they don’t get the option. Why?

Derek has appeared out of nowhere and punched Ethan across the face, full-force; the resulting spray of blood makes the nearest students go _ooh._ Ethan is on the ground and Derek’s just punching the shit out of him, really. He’s grunting with the force that he’s just laying into him and it is satisfying, truly, though Stiles hates when Derek gets into fights. It’s rare enough, nowadays, but he’s still allowed to hate it.

(Saying that, Derek was the cause of the last fight that Stiles was in, when Lee, a wannabe jackass on the baseball team made a comment at try-outs about refusing to follow Derek as the newly appointed co-captain, because he had two moms and you ‘can’t trust a guy that’s been brought up like that’. He felt differently once Stiles had punched his front teeth in. He blames the veneers for being poorly put together. He couldn’t try out for the team after that badly performed punch mangled his hand up, and besides, he didn’t really have time to be on the baseball team. Jackson would be an asshole to follow. He wants to be sure that Derek and Scott never find out about that fight, however.)

He’d admit it over his dead body, but he’s worried about the day Derek gets into a fight that he can’t really back up. It looks like Ethan’s hockey friends are just taking pictures, though.

“You cupcakes need to pull yourselves together,” Coach Finstock has abruptly pulled them apart, and Scott’s got his hand on Derek’s shoulder, seemingly to prevent that extra punch Derek’s considering.

Derek doesn’t look twice at Stiles before striding straight towards the office, but Ethan looks like he’s regretting getting anywhere near Stiles’s ass to begin with, with his face bloodied and bruised. Derek seems to have done a lot of damage in not a lot of time at all.  

“Stilinski, you better come with us,” Coach Finstock calls over his shoulder where he’s frog-marching Ethan in. Stiles doesn’t remember dropping his bag but he picks it up and follows. His dad will kill him if he gets detention on the first day.

He’s sat with Derek outside the principal’s office and it’s the first time he doesn’t know what to say to him. He wonders why he reacted so strongly, until it’s eating him alive, and he’s got to ask.

“Why did you do that?” Stiles blurts out.

Derek’s head swings around from where he’s been gazing out to the ocean, and he frowns.

“I wasn’t about to let Scott get into a fight he couldn’t finish, and besides, no one should be treated like that,” Derek shrugs, like it’s no big deal, and not earth shattering. “Especially you.”

“Especially -- me? Moi?” Stiles kicks his bag in surprise.

“You’re like my little brother, obviously I’m not going to let some guy like _Ethan_ hit  _on_ you like that. You deserve better.” Derek has got his _you’re being a dumbass_ smile on and he’s well-acquainted with it, but his patronising attitude, as always, sets Stiles off.

“I think I can handle a guy _like Ethan_ hitting on me,” Stiles doesn’t realise he’s mimicking Derek’s voice till he’s too late.

“You have zero experience. You’ve never even had a girlfriend,” Derek points out, looking smug. “Or a boyfriend.”

“How do _you_ know that?” Stiles narrows his eyes at Derek. It’s not like he regularly discusses his relationship status with anyone bar Scott, and he knows Scott wouldn’t do anything with that information. Stiles would trust Scott with anything and everything.

Derek ignores his question and goes back to staring out the window.

 

Mrs Morrell’s office is all tawny wood and pearlescent lamps. Stiles has never been caught for his misdemeanours before, unlike Derek, so Mrs Morrell has no reason to be that well-acquainted with him. Being subpar on multiple sports teams and with the third highest GPA in his year means that he doesn’t get many awards, when it comes down to it. It suits him just fine.

“Mr Stilinski – those shorts are ridiculous.”

“You’re blaming my shorts for Ethan slapping my ass.”

“No – that is inexcusable behaviour on his part, and he will be punished. Unfortunately, I have to discipline you too.” Mrs Morrell looks unrepentant.

“ _He_ assaulted me,” Stiles points out.

“He’s going to be suspended,” Mrs Morrell says. “For that and another thing.”

“Smoking weed on school property?” Stiles snorts. Mrs Morrell inclines her head and doesn’t bother asking how Stiles knows that. He has his sources.

“Will Derek?” Stiles abruptly feels a tightness in his chest. It’s been an exciting morning, it’s not surprising that his anxiety would make an appearance eventually.

“Mr Delgado-Hale will receive a few detentions,” Mrs Morrell says with a smile on her face. “Whereas, you’ll just get half of one.”

Stiles gapes at her -- what did he do wrong -- he just got slapped on the ass and sat back while Derek massacred the guy.

“You broke the dress code,” Mrs Morrell says with a raised eyebrow that judges his life choices to date, and any others he will make. “Girls aren’t allowed to wear skirts four inches above their knees either, so don’t try to say that the school is being sexist.”

Stiles closes his mouth with an audible click.

“Your dad dropped off your pants from the dry cleaners. May I suggest that you find an alternative pair of back-ups?”

Stiles nods and barely saves his eye-roll for once he’s left the office, clutching the new, beloved pants to his chest.

 

He bins the booty shorts faster than you could say spandex and tries to repress the memory as if it never happened. Of course, this being Stiles's life, it doesn't work that way.

Lunch proves to be the biggest pain in his ass since Derek decided to start wearing his leather jacket on a daily basis. It is a painful experience. 

Allison Argent, Lydia Martin and Erica Reyes stand in front of him, in varying shades of amusement.

He’s friends with two of them, Lydia and Erica, in very separate ways, but it’s the first time the three of them, their girl only squad, has honoured him with their presence at lunch. They usually sit with Danny and Jackson.

Despite being really good friends with Erica, Derek rarely sits with her at lunch, preferring to stay by Boyd and Isaac instead, out on the quad. Stiles likes to think it’s so Derek can work on his tan; Isaac sits in scarves year-round, never quite used to the outdoor temperatures with his hair perpetually damp from all the award-winning swim team practices he does, and Boyd spends most of the time messaging Erica and picking through the leftovers from all three lunches, from the looks of it. Boyd’s metabolism is renowned on the football team. The guy once ate two whole chickens in a row after a game; it made the rounds on YouTube for a while.

Stiles thinks that there must be some unresolved conflict between Allison and Derek, given her aunt was Derek’s first ever girlfriend. The infamous Kate Argent pounced on Derek when he was thirteen and she was a solid twenty-six. The police were involved, and it was a whole thing, but he thinks the school just know that Derek dated Allison’s cougar aunt. Not that said paedophilic aunt is currently serving twenty-five-to-life in county jail for statutory rape and attempted murder with intent. The Delgado-Hales went through a lot.

The point is, Stiles and Lydia study together, he and Erica game together. But he’s not really forgiven Allison over Kate just yet, though he knows, rationally, it’s not her fault. She didn’t mean to introduce Derek to a criminal predator at her own thirteenth birthday party, it was just one of those things that Stiles can’t forget. It doesn’t matter that she got held back a year from the guilt-based trauma and (according to rumours that Lydia would kill him for knowing) still needs therapy this day. He still can’t forgive her, and she knows this, it’s probably why she’s kept her distance from Stiles, Scott, and Derek, up until now at least.

All three girls settle in what would’ve been Scott’s seat, if he hadn’t been kept talking to Ms Burke about his crazy good AP English essay. She’s sending it to some state-wide competition. Stiles is already planning their celebratory ice-cream after school.

If they wanted to talk to him individually, Lydia would Whatsapp their Genius Only chat, and he and Erica have long since established their meme-filled iMessage stream.  

It doesn’t explain what they’re doing in front of him, though.

They don’t talk to each other during school hours, and that’s what he likes. Until now.

“How crazy was that fight?” Lydia says with mock awe. She rolls her eyes not long after, and mutters, “ _boys_.”

Allison dimples at him and he blinks. She is pure sunshine and he doesn’t trust it.

“Have you made out with _him_ yet?” Erica grins.

Stiles chokes on his grapefruit juice and one of them slaps his back. He thinks it’s Allison.

“With who?” Stiles croaks out, to answering grins from Erica and Lydia.

“How’s Scott?” Allison asks, out of nowhere. Stiles thinks there’s a slight flush to her fair cheeks that wasn’t there a second ago.

He feels a surge of protectiveness over Scott. He knows that Allison isn’t Kate, but he worries why she’d be interested. Some insane part of him worries that she just wants to finish what Kate started, and he’d never let that happen. Her family produced Kate, god knows what they’re really capable of. He’s saying that like the Argents didn’t sit on the stand and help indict Kate when it came down to it. Still, he doesn’t trust her at all.  

“He’s fine…still doesn’t explain why _you’re_ sitting with me,” Stiles tries to convey via eyebrow his total confusion.

“We wanted to say congratulations for scoring Derek Delgado-Hale,” Erica’s smile is way too predatory for Stiles to feel completely comfortable.

“Scored for who now?” Stiles sputters. His laugh is tight in his chest. He thinks the extra air has gone and made him hysterical.

Lydia’s eyes are shrewd. “Everyone knows about it, Stiles. Why lie?”

“What am I lying about?” Stiles’ gesture is more like a flap.

“You know,” Erica grits her teeth like Stiles is annoying her.

“He doesn’t know,” Lydia says, with the look of someone experiencing a dawn of realisation that Stiles wishes he had. Allison barely covers her smile with a hand. Stiles follows her eyes and catches her staring at Scott like a habit, but she looks away before Scott looks up. He wonders how long she’s been doing that for, and how he’s never noticed.

“We’ll leave you to your confusing thoughts _._ Come on, girls,” Erica nudges Lydia’s arm and the three of them stalk away, leaving Stiles very confused, and his lunch cold.

They ruin meat loaf day for him.

The headache just above his right eyebrow is triggered by the _lunchtime confrontation of doom_ , as he’s calling it in his head, but also the fact that they’ve got two days to come up with a fundraiser that is both cool, innovative and sellable to a range of hooligan youths. This feels like a Greenburg level task, he’s sure of it.

“I don’t get it, Scott,” Stiles speaks at the curtain from where Scott is trying on a new set of lacrosse gear. “How’re we supposed to come up with an event for lacrosse and cross-country for the Fall Fundraiser? Alone?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t’ve called out coach for menstruating in front of the _entire gym class_ ,” Scott offers back. Stiles huffs.

“The man sat in ketchup at lunch. I saw an opportunity, I had to take it.”

“Remind me again what Allison said about me today?” It’s not like this isn’t the fourth time Stiles has repeated it.

“Maybe Laura will have a good idea,” Stiles mutters, and opens up their Whatsapp chat. She always has the good ideas.

“What did Allison say, Stiles?” Scott sounds irate and excited.

“And,  _of course_ , Laura replies immediately. Can I just say, she’s my favourite of your siblings?”

“Stiles! Allison’s thing she said?”

“Allison is a varsity cheerleader, bro. The only way she’d let you kiss her was if you paid her for it.”

An idea forms in Stiles’s mind, stupid and brilliant all at once. Scott pokes out from the changing room and his eyes are twitching in weird, genius ways.

“Kissing Booth!” Stiles and Scott blurt at the same time.

An old lady across the store starts squawking about Scott’s junk being out, but he doesn’t care. They’ve got themselves an idea.

 ****

Stiles serves his half detention the next day after school, but before swim practice. The thought that he has to go and swim for an hour and a half is making him feel sore and achy already. Sometimes, just sometimes, he wishes he could just skip practice, say that he’s not up for it. He thinks it’s a toss-up between Coach Finstock or his dad for who would kill him first.

Danny’s in the seat next to him, serving time for some mild hacking into the school email system, and Erica and Boyd are sat apart from each other, because they got caught making out behind the bike shed, again. Stiles is pretty sure it’s their fifth time this year alone.  

Derek slinks in just before the bell goes off and slumps at a back desk with a stack of books. He doesn’t look at Stiles twice, like normal when they’re in school, unless he’s defending his honour, apparently. Just sits in the back with his books and Boyd and Erica, muttering to each other about how stupid everyone else is. Or Stiles assumes that’s what they’re like, anyway.  

A note slides onto Stiles’s desk from Danny, who’s sitting off to his right, quirking a smile.

 _I’m sorry for what Ethan did,_ writes Danny, and that’s when Stiles remembers that they broke up at the end of last semester. It’s weird that Danny feels any responsibility for his asshole ex-boyfriend, but there you have it, the boy is total sunshine.

 _It’s not your fault,_ Stiles writes back, and sends it across.

They spend the next half hour like that, just writing to each other, and it’s nice. Danny is sarcastic and hilarious and hot like burning. Stiles is so into the idea of it.

While he’s waiting for a response, he feels the back of his neck prickle. He turns around to find Derek glaring at the back of his neck like he _hates_ it. He’s fuming, scowling so hard that his eyebrows are one entity. His face is the human equivalent to a teething toddler thundercloud.

“What?” Stiles mouths with a shrug.

Derek rolls his eyes and shakes his head, like Stiles is being deliberately obtuse. That line of tension from yesterday is back in his shoulders and Stiles does not understand Derek at all, recently.

He’s acting weird, even for him.

 

Danny messages him after swim practice about meeting for drinks in the new bar, _Hotshots_ , just outside town. Stiles blow dries his hair in such a hurry that Isaac laughs at him, takes a Snapchat, and proceeds to message someone about it. Probably Erica, she always enjoys mocking him.

He gets a ride home from Jackson, crammed into the backseat of the Porsche while Lydia talks at him about the homework due tomorrow morning. He refuses to catch her second-hand anxiety. Stiles changes outfit three times until Scott comes over and reassures him back into his original outfit of tight black jeans and a maroon top that Laura once said _brings out his eyes_.

Scott gives him a ride to the bar.

“What if we have nothing in common?” Stiles says through a mouthful of hangnail.

“It’s Danny. He’s a nice person, he’s smart, friendly...the dude _volunteers_ in his spare time,” Scott points out. “You’ll be fine. I’ll even loiter in the area, just in case you need me to come and pick you up.”

“That’s such a Derek thing to do,” Stiles points out, fond, his chest full of warmth. What he’d do without the Delgado-Hales, he dreads to think. Life just wouldn’t be the same.

He can confirm this when Danny stands him up.

Scott takes him to the arcade and reassures him that _no, your butt isn’t too big, Stiles_ , and _no, you’re not a failure just because a dude is a dickbag_.

They make it two rounds on their favoured dance machine with Stiles morosely picking up his feet until Scott freezes and adopts his angry puppy face that he instantly recognises from the days of driving to school in the downtown traffic.

Stiles turns and sees Danny, looking guilty as fuck, waiting to talk to him.

Scott hops off the machine and squares up to Danny, despite being a solid few inches shorter. Stiles recognises the look on his face turn into something that looks like Derek, Laura, and Cora. He so rarely sees the likeness but right now it’s vividly clear. 

“I’d suggest you leave,” Scott says, with an assured tilt of his chin that says he will harm Danny if he gets close to Stiles. It fills his heart with the fuzzies.

“Can I just talk to Stiles?” Danny sighs.

“Fine,” Scott huffs, making _I’m watching you actions_ at Danny. Stiles wishes he could have his emergency Scott blanket with him at all times.

“Do you have an explanation for standing me up?” Stiles asks.

 “Not really. I did really want to take you out for drinks, I promise, it’s just that…”

“You tripped over on your way out?” Stiles offers. “You fell and hit your head? You realised you’ve wanted Jackson all along?”

Danny looks like he’s about to puke, but just shakes his head slowly.

“Derek told me it wouldn’t be a good idea to turn up to our date tonight. For a while now, he’s spread it round to all the guys and girls that it’s a bad idea to date you.” Danny shrugs. “It’s not worth the aggravation, you could practically hear the Taylor Swift in his face, Stiles.”

Scott’s mouth is open like he’s trying to catch flies.

“He doesn’t want me to get laid, _ever_ ,” Stiles realises with horror. Danny rolls his eyes at Scott. “He is such a life ruiner. He will rue the day. He will.”

Stiles storms out of the arcade, leaving Danny and Scott just shaking their heads at each other.

“ _Scott_!”

Stiles is seething in Scott’s car.

“He probably meant something nice by it…in his weird, weird way,” Scott tries. Stiles glares him down. “Yeah, my brother is a dick, I don’t know. I’m sorry?”

“He will be sorry,” Stiles promises, and Scott gulps.

“So… first lacrosse practice tomorrow, that should be fun,” Scott tries.

Stiles stares him down.

  

“You’ve still got a lot to learn, kiddo,” he can hear the scratch of Derek’s pen down the line.

As much as the asshole likes to pretend that he’s not a nerd with his leather jacket, motorcycle, and fucking Ray Bans, Stiles knows better. He’s aware that Derek stays up late to get his homework done every night, tutors middle schoolers, and actively does unassigned extra reading. He is a goddamn expert in History, Stiles knows, he’s seen Derek’s exemplar essays. Mrs Bury raves about him in lunchtime History club.

Derek’s academic success, if Stiles paused to think about it, which he’s not gonna, is partly why the ‘kiddo’ rankles as much as it does. His overwhelming past crush doesn’t help things, either.

“ _Kiddo_. If you were here I would beat you with my cleats.” Stiles is seething.

He wanted an apology, a sincere one, where it ended with Derek saying _how can I make it up to you_ and Stiles ordering him to do the kissing booth at the Fall Festival. He should’ve realised it wouldn’t be that easy, duh, it’s Derek.

Derek, instead, patronises him by calling Stiles a _kiddo_. Stiles is seventeen in May, a Junior, and Derek knows that he’d had to grow up, and fast, when his mom died.  

“You’ve never even had a relationship… you wouldn’t be able to handle someone like Danny.”

“What do you even mean by that?”

“He’s a player.” Derek’s eye roll is audible.

“How would you know? You haven’t dated anyone since Kate?” Stiles shoots back.

“So I can recognise a player when I see one,” Derek says, that dark thundercloud undertone entering his tone at the mention of Kate’s name. Stiles hates himself for saying her name, but still. So many lines have been crossed.  

“It’s not your job to monitor my dating life. I _will_ tell Laura. _I will_.”

“She’d agree that someone’s got to look out for you,” Derek huffs, like he’s doing Stiles a favour. A goddamn _favour_.

“The days of you controlling mydating life are over _._ ” Stiles is seething. 

“We’ll see about that.” Derek’s got that infuriatingly hot smirk on his face, Stiles can hear it.

It’s part of the reason he throws his phone across the room.

 

Scott makes the situation worse by _selfishly_ having an asthma check-up, last minute, after school the next day. Melissa tells him that Derek will be driving him home with the tone of someone that would relish Stiles being against this idea and arguing about it.

Derek doesn't know because Stiles is ignoring him, but Stiles is ignoring him. This ride home debacle really puts a spanner to that idea. 

Derek’s talking to a rogue Varsity softball player, he thinks her name’s something trashy like Shantal, when Stiles reaches the promised parking spot.

“Hey,” Stiles calls out. Derek’s head snaps around and if Stiles didn’t know any better, he’d think that a smile just started to spread across his face, before being hastily withdrawn.

“See you in Math, Derek,” Shantal calls with a wave. She even smirks a little at Stiles, which is not new. On the Varsity break last year, one of the softball girls tried to get into his pants, and Stiles was so wasted he still can’t remember which one it was, but the entirety of the team have enjoyed smirking at his face ever since.  Maybe it was Shantal?

“You ready?” Derek breaks his wondering by snapping his fingers in his face.

Stiles rolls his eyes.

“Where’s your car?” The Delgado-Hales buy their kids Camaros when they turn 16, unless you're Scott and you want a Mustang. He has fond memories of going to Taco Bell with Laura in hers, travelling to Costco with Cora, all these good memories. Stiles has never been invited into Derek’s car. He’s had multiple dreams about doing Derek in his car, though.

“In the shop,” Derek’s eyebrows start to look offended on behalf of his motorcycle. His precious.

“I’m not getting on the back of that,” Stiles shrugs and weighs up the effort of running home. At least this way, he can go for that burger and fries for dinner that he wanted.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Uh, I’ll give my dad a coronary?” Stiles offers. “I’ll fall off and break myself when you decide you don’t want my hands anywhere near you.”

Derek’s eyes, unwillingly, drop to Stiles’s hands, and he scowls. Stiles just _loves_ making Derek miserable, it’s a wonderful gift he’s got, definitely doesn’t makes him feel terrible about himself. Spoiler alert: it does.

“It’s a beautiful day…think I’ll go for a run instead,” Stiles stretches his hamstring and is hugely surprised when Derek’s eyes follow the motion. _He’s probably just making sure I stretch properly_ , he thinks, and goes hot under the collar at the dirty thought of it.

“But I promised Scott I’d give you a ride,” Derek frowns.

“Didn’t catch that,” Stiles slides his headphones in. He stretches his left tricep across his chest and Derek’s mouth thins out into a line of stress.

“It’s 80 degrees out and you’re not even wearing lotion,” Derek’s eyebrows look confused.

“What? I can’t hear you?” Stiles has his headphones in and the beat of Kelsea Ballerini is already pumping him up ready to go.

“Come on,” Derek bellows.

“Don’t have an aneurism,” Stiles shouts back over his shoulder.

He hears one final, aggravated, “I knew you could hear me!”

 ****

It’s Scott’s idea to throw the party when Melissa announces she and Talia are going to Martha’s Vineyard for the weekend for their anniversary. Talia surprised Melissa with the trip when she was dropped off for her overnight shift at the hospital, and Melissa’s cheeks are still flushed, pleased, as she tells the kids over dinner.

“Congrats, mom,” Scott and Derek say, almost at the exact time. They glower at each other. Stiles covers his laugh with his hand until it sounds like a cough. Both heads snap to frown at him anyway.

“Are you planning anything while you’re there?” Stiles asks innocently.

Melissa wiggles her eyebrows at him while her children retch. Every time, he thinks fondly.

After dinner, while Stiles is helping Scott clear up in the kitchen, Scott announces he’s already messaged Lydia about holding the first rager of the semester at his place, and everyone’s coming.  It’s made it on the school’s social Google calendar that Lydia, Allison and Erica exclusively run. It’s a big deal to make it on the calendar, Stiles is aware.

“Derek hates parties,” Stiles points out, because someone needs to. Derek called the cops on the last party in his own house, according to his dad’s very private records that Stiles definitely didn’t look through. Not that Laura needs to know that, ever.

Scott pouts. Actively pouts and looks like Laura enough that Stiles feels his will start to falter. Damn his weaknesses for the Delgado-Hale kids.

“I want to talk to Allison outside of school and everyone muttering stuff behind her back,” Scott admits, scratching his head bashfully.

It’s just like Scott to plan an entire party just to talk to the girl he’s in love with.

“Besides,  _you_ need to relax,” Scott says, poking at the bags under his eyes. “How much sleep did you get last night?”

“Some,” Stiles argues.

It’s a lie. He got confused by his economics homework so spent hours researching and got lost in a google deep dive that ended in watching other people do google deep dives. It was great until it got to four a.m. and he realised he needed to be up in two hours for Wednesday’s early morning lacrosse practice. That used to be swim practice, until Stiles made beseeching eyebrows at Coach about missing out on the Wednesday lacrosse team IHOP breakfast. If pressed, he’d admit that being a member of so many clubs means that he misses out on the best parts of pretty much all of them.

“Yeah, okay, Stiles,” Scott grins. “You should have like six naps and then party. Party like crazy, man. Have fun, relax a little, drink all the coke and rum like last time. I’ll even make vodka jello shots!”

“I do love your jello shots,” Stiles mutters. “You’ll make watermelon?”

“Duh,” Scott rolls his eyes, and it’s decided.

  

The party is in full swing when he walks through the door, after a solid disco nap.

Someone’s let Greenberg have access to a football and he chucks it at Stiles upon entry. He catches it on reflex-- because well, he’s one of the better Wide Receivers on the team -- and throws it out the door onto his side of the fence, where no one will attempt to retrieve it, because they are terrified of his dad. They don’t need to know his dad’s not home.

He loves Talia Delgado-Hale too much to risk one of her vases getting caught up in drunken mess.

There are drunk people making out on the sofa, people playing video games in the den, and a serious game of Beer Pong going on. Lydia and Jackson appear to be making out by the side of the pool, and Erica and Boyd are nowhere to be found, which is a promising start to a party if they’re already christening one of the guest bedrooms.

Allison and Scott are sitting on the back lawn, looking up at the stars, and talking quietly to each other. Scott says something with a hopeful smile and Allison colours deeply. They keep grinning at each other for a second after the moment is over, and it makes Stiles’s heart hurt.

“Aren’t they gross,” Isaac mutters, suddenly by his side, and handing him two shots of something very pink, which Stiles knocks back without question. He knows Isaac from years on the swim team and Derek’s unwilling birthday parties, but now they’ve both made First String lacrosse. Funny how those things work out.

“Extremely,” Stiles agrees. He turns fully to Isaac and notes that Danny is frowning at Isaac’s back, and scuffs his feet in the patio when he gets caught staring. “Did you wander away from _someone_ important?”

“Just talking about school stuff,” Isaac shrugs and doesn’t even attempt to hide the pleased look on his face. “I don’t really get to talk to him in school, so. Perfect opportunity.”

Isaac smirks, like Stiles is such a virgin that he won’t get the hint. He’s lonely, not stupid.

“He’s a player, apparently,” Stiles adds, for no particular reason. He’s not bitter that Danny didn’t want to date him, at all.

“Danny?” Isaac frowns, and glances back at where Danny’s now chatting to a smug, slightly dishevelled-looking Erica. “Naw, he’s only ever dated two guys, that ass-slapper, Ethan for like a year and a half, and another dude for six months before that. He hasn’t been seeing anyone since Ethan, either.”

“Oh shit, my bad. Good luck with him, dude,” Stiles says, feeling a little awkward and extra douchey. He fist bumps Isaac’s shoulder with an awkward _whoops_ sound.

Isaac is still frowning when he wanders back to Danny, and they get involved in a conversation that looks so intimate, even Erica drifts away and finds Stiles instead.

Erica hands him another two pink shots and he knocks them back. He thinks that he’s deserved a bit of fun and he’s safe here, because it’s not like Scott will let him get too wasted.

He dances for a bit with Erica until she insists on doing body shots with him and Lydia. Stiles unbuttons his own shirt willingly and stays sticky from tequila for the rest of the night.

Things are a bit fuzzy and then he’s suddenly crowded into the kitchen with Erica, Allison and Lydia. Scott is nowhere to be seen, probably hurling somewhere, Stiles thinks fondly. The boy has the tolerance of a foetus.

Derek, however, is just off to his right on the kitchen balcony, with the stiffest back Stiles has ever seen, chatting to a random girl. He’s in one of his studying cardigans, Stiles knows, and he doesn’t look pleased that Scott’s filled their house with almost everyone from school.

“Why don’t you ask Derek to do the kissing booth?” Allison slurs the word kissing. “You’ll get loads of people then, right, guys?”

“Ew, no,” Erica gags, and Lydia laughs in her face.

“Yeah, go on Stiles,” Lydia points to Derek with a slosh of her cup.

He stumbles over and the room is moving, he thinks, shifting from side to side. It’s making him feel a bit woozy, in all honesty. Stiles clutches Derek’s arm as he trips over his feet and has to be steadied.

“Will you do our kissing booth?” Stiles slurs and immediately feels awkward when he notices that he’s getting daggers from the girl Derek was talking to, before he interrupted.

Derek’s face is doing this whole soft concerned thing like he wants to make sure that Stiles _hydrates_ and it is confusing as hell.

“Can you go fuck yourself?” the girl says, making both Derek and Stiles startle.

“Yeah, you can’t do that here,” Derek scrubs a hand behind his head, looking irritated. All traces of that soft glowy look are gone, like they never existed.

“What?” the girl doesn’t look like she gets told _no_ very often.

“Unfortunately, he’s important to my family, and important to me, so you can’t say that,” Derek says. “Just leave.”

The girl slams into Stiles’s shoulder on the way past and for a second, he wants to trip her over.

“Thanks...for that,” Stiles says. He forgot how awkward these parties can be. “Does that mean you’ll do our kissing booth?”

“Absolutely not,” Derek smiles at him with the air of someone deeply amused.

“Right...gotcha,” Stiles, for the second time that day, just finds himself staring at Derek.

He doesn’t want to ask, but all these things… beating up Ethan because he slapped his ass, telling people not to date him, saying that Stiles is important to him...could these things mean that Derek wants Stiles for himself? Is that possible? Combined, all three, it’s a pattern.

Stiles snorts and goes back to Erica, because he wants to get too drunk to consider that idea.

After the next set of shots, the evening becomes foggy, and Stiles will find that he doesn’t remember it at all.           

 

Derek swallows back a chug of the beer that Boyd hands him before tuning back into Lydia’s conversation with Isaac. If they’re gonna talk about Stiles, he’ll listen, even if he’s not invited to hear it.

“Warren was going to ask him out, right,” Lydia talks under her breath between sips of her OJ and vodka. “But he just changed his mind? Messaged me about some crap about AP Chem getting him busy. I just don’t get it - we all think Stiles is bi - but maybe he’s not?”

Derek doesn’t want to process how the speculation that Stiles might not be into guys is making him feel.

“It’s not your goddamn business whether he is or he isn’t, Lydia,” Derek snaps, feeling all of a sudden too hot under his cardigan. “Stop talking about it.”

She raises one primly plucked eyebrow. He doesn’t care if she is the almighty Lydia Martin, academic star, prom queen, and his co-captain’s girlfriend, she was out of line, and she knows it.

“I think Derek’s made it pretty clear to, um, a lot of people, that unless they have the purest of intentions, they shouldn’t go near Stiles,” Isaac says, shooting Derek a nervous look. Derek wishes the ground could just swallow him up right now.

“He has, has he?” Lydia’s eyebrows are telling him to go fuck himself, and he agrees. “Maybe you want to keep an eye on what’s going on over there, hmm?”

Derek follows her gaze to where Stiles is stripping off on their outside lunch table. His mom engraved that table with Greek mythology that Cora liked when she was a kid and Stiles is standing on it. He’s whipping off his shirt with his goddamn hands over his broad shoulders, and unbuckling his pants to reveal strong, lean thighs, lightly dusted with hair that matches that trail below his belly button. The muscles in Stiles’s body _move_ and _flex_ under the fairy lights as he sways to the beat of the Charlie Puth song playing in the back.

Before his ankles get caught up in his pants and he faceplants towards the concrete decking.

Derek swallows his tongue in his rush to catch him.

 ****

Stiles wakes up feeling like someone has slammed an anvil onto his head.

“Unghhhh,” the sound is involuntary and it’s way too loud.

His eyes are fuzzy at first and it takes him a beat to realise where he is.

The room is grey and unfamiliar, with loads of that NorCal light pouring in. It’s got to be at least midday, which means he’s missed his workout session with Scott in the gym, _fuck_. There are textbooks piled up everywhere, a motorcycle poster on the wall, a badass leather jacket strung up on the back of the door, and a framed photo of the 2012 Delgado-Hale-Stilinski annual family picnic on the desk. Oh no. Oh _shit._

The owner of the room slinks in through the door and closes it quietly, like he wasn’t sure Stiles would be awake, and didn’t want to potentially wake him up.

“How did I get here?” Stiles asks, slurring, despite feeling absolutely horrendously hung-over.

“You took a dive off the table out back...I caught you and you puked on yourself.” Derek’s rolling his eyes and Stiles is not even sure if he realises that he does it.

“Did we…” Stiles gestures towards his body under the covers, because someone changed his clothes. He’s only wearing a baseball shirt and his own unfortunately tight boxer briefs, and the shirt is not his.

“I slept in the guest room.” Derek looks insulted at the very thought of having sex with Stiles.

“Thank god,” Stiles’s mouth smells like roadkill. He has to leave. He has to find Scott.

Stiles clambers out of Derek’s bed -- ignoring the part of him screaming _YOU SLEPT IN DEREK’S BED_ \-- and realises just how short his briefs are.

He scuttles behind the long curtain and prays that the light doesn’t turn his briefs see through.

“Can you pass me those shorts?” Stiles gestures to the soft looking shorts on the floor.

Derek just raises his eyebrows.

“For fuck sake,” Stiles mutters mid-lean for the shorts, at the same time Derek laughs and reaches for them.

Someone up there must have it in for him, because the curtain comes with him, and he lands on top of Derek. Firstly, he thinks that Derek is more solid than he looks, and secondly he panics, and rolls to the right. The same way that Derek rolls.

Stiles takes Derek with him and wraps them both in a curtain burrito with his arms trapped by his side.

“Stop moving!” Derek sounds panicky.

“My hand is stuck - I’m just gonna reach down and -” they both freeze when Stiles touches something hot and long. And slightly hard.

“I SAID STOP MOVING!"

“I CAN’T GET OUT!”

Stiles rolls over and escapes from the curtain coffin. He scrambles to his feet and makes a break for the door.

“You forgot something,” Derek says, cheeks flushed. Stiles can’t look below his eye level. But he does anyway, and he’s clutching a pillow to his lap. “My shirt?”

Stiles whips off the shorts _and_ the shirt, ‘cause if he’s gonna be a little bitch about one, he’ll be a little shit about the other. Derek clutches his hand to his chest like a little old lady.

“I was kidding! Jesus, Stiles! Put them back on!”

Derek looks traumatised as Stiles ducks out of his room, swearing to himself never to return.

Until he gets two steps away and realises he, in his rush, has forgotten his phone. He reluctantly knocks on the door and a startled Derek answers. Wearing _superman. Boxers._ And Stiles’s phone in his hand, which he reaches for, feeling sort of numb. He has lost words. What are they?

He’s gaping and thinking that he needs to say something intellectual. Something.

“Superman boxers.” Or not. He resists the urge to smack himself in the head because pain.

“You’re mocking me over my superhero underwear? _You_?”

Stiles shrugs, and takes a picture super quickly, and holds his phone out of reach when Derek’s face contorts with fury. Their faces are close while Derek makes aggressive eyebrows at Stiles and his own wiggle back.

“I’ll delete it if you’ll do the kissing booth.” Stiles smirks.

“I saved you and you’re trying to blackmail me?” Derek’s eyebrows are telling him to go fuck himself, which, rude.

“It sounds so tawdry when you put it like that,” Stiles drawls.

“Out.” Derek’s hand is hot like a brand when he shoves his chest out of the door.

“Think about it.” Stiles orders and Derek slams the door in his face.

 

 _You know I don’t care if you send that to the entire school,_ is the message Stiles receives later.

Stiles grits his teeth. He hates that his desire for Derek to be happy and experience all the good things in life and school means that he’d never had any intention for the photo to ever leave the Hidden album on his iPhone. God, but he hates himself.

 

Stiles is thrilled when Coach signs off on the giant neon Kissing Booth sign. Stiles just talked about his busy schedule until Coach looked stressed and signed away three thousand dollars, just so he could shoo Stiles away. Scott cheers when he finds out and they chest bump in the cafeteria, unabashedly.

Stiles catches Allison watching Scott with a stupid, doofish grin on her face that looks eerily similar to the one Scott always wears when he sees her walk through the halls.

The organisation for the kissing booth is the easiest part of it, as it turns out. Jackson basically throws himself at Stiles’s feet to do it, which isn’t surprising. An event where dozens of girls will pay to kiss him, in front of everyone? Stiles isn’t shocked when Jackson brags that this isn’t his first booth.

Lydia smiles sweetly at Jackson across the table, but her eyes say _I don’t know who cut his brakes, officer_.

Erica volunteers Boyd.

“If I have to do it, so do you,” he points out. She pouts but nods eventually.

“This isn’t going to be a weird, making eyes at each other over the tables while you kiss other people and then disappearing to fuck it out in the back, _thing,_ is it?” Stiles asks.

Erica smirks. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

**** 

Derek doesn’t give into Stiles’s attempt to hound him for the kissing booth. He ducks behind corners when he sees Stiles coming.

The only time he sees Derek that week is in the crowd before the semester’s biggest Swim Meet. Coach hyped the team up by playing Barbie Girl in the locker room until Isaac almost brained himself by clattering into Jackson’s open locker door mid jump. Isaac kept muttering about 2002’s music scene in a daze, last time Stiles checked. The nurse is increasingly concerned and put her foot down when Coach tried to bribe her to let Isaac swim.

He doesn’t let that worry distract him from absolutely annihilating the opposition.

Stiles’s last race of the day is when he finally emerges, breathless and glistening from the water after destroying Clement High’s star sweetheart. The guy is still sobbing into his coach’s shoulder even thirty minutes after and Stiles is not smirking openly, nope, he’s not. That would be unsportsmanlike.

He looks up into the crowd and finds Derek’s eyes on him. The look on his face, though, it’s – it is weird, is what it is. He looks politely pleased, but his eyes are lazy and appreciative, tracking Stiles in his swimsuit and the water droplets on his shoulders. The look he’s giving Stiles looks intimate, like it could be over a dinner table or under some bedsheets. It is weird.

“Well done,” Derek mouths at him. Stiles cedes his head.

“Kissing Booth?” Stiles mouths back.

Derek flips him off and Stiles grins. He will do it. He will.

Derek takes to hiding in his room whenever Stiles goes over to the Delgado-Hale residence.

In lieu of saying fuck off, Derek blasts Linkin Park loud enough that either Melissa or Talia, if they’re in the house, will yell up the stairs at him to _turn it the fuck down_.

The bastard knows Stiles can’t stand the band and will actively seek refuge elsewhere if they’re played. This means _war_.  

 

The next day, Stiles has done research about Promposals to try and embarrass Derek into doing the Kissing Booth. Scott has tried to talk him down but to no avail, Stiles is certain.

He writes ‘ _Kissing Booth?’_ in shaving foam on the bonnet of Derek’s car. It’s not his fault the weather got really hot and effectively baked the foam words into the car itself; apparently it won’t come clean, like ever. Talia laughs until she cries when she sees the car and sends pictures to Laura and Cora while Derek pouts. Stiles would feel worse if he’d damaged the Ducati, is what he insists to anyone who will listen. Derek and Melissa’s eyebrows refuse to hear him out. 

He hires a Mariachi band to target Derek during lunch while the entire school looks on. They play the playlist Stiles carefully put together, songs that focus on kissing, like Soulja Boy’s ‘Kiss me thru the phone’ and One Direction’s ‘Kiss You’ until the hour’s up and they leave Derek looking mortified with his face red enough to fry an egg on it. Stiles probably shouldn’t take as much enjoyment from it as he does, honestly. He watches the video on repeat after school that night.

The next day, he fills Derek’s locker with Hershey’s kisses and glittery lip shaped confetti. He watches from around a corner when they rain down on his pissed off, incredulous face. It becomes less funny when Boyd has an allergic reaction and has to be stabbed with an epi pen and rushed to hospital. Stiles gets Boyd mini cupcakes as an apology and offers to pay the hospital bill, which Boyd laughs away with a wave of his cupcake filled hand. Derek looks furious that Boyd isn’t angry at all. Nobody’s told him he’s still got confetti in his hair.

Stiles is moments from pulling a _10 Things I Hate About You_ and singing to Derek in front of the entire school when Scott arranges the intervention.

 “I think you need to stop picking on my brother,” Scott says, delicately, like he’s handling Stiles on Fridays when the week’s exhaustion has finally caught up to him.

“I’m not being mean, Scott,” Stiles argues.

“You’re pulling his pigtails,” Scott sticks his fingers up and checks off each point. “You’re stressing him out. He’s worried you’ve done something to his room. He keeps making me check everything he’s drinking, Stiles, in case you’ve put hot sauce in there.”

“Aw come on, I haven’t done anything that bad,” Stiles objects.

“You’re drawing a lot of attention to him,” Scott points out. “Which makes him uncomfortable. You know I wouldn’t say anything unless it was serious, dude.”

“He’s really that bothered?”

“He tried to wear his Ray Bans in math, today,” Scott scratches his ear. “Because he thought everyone was looking at him.”

“Maybe I should send him apology flowers,” Stiles wonders aloud.

“God, no,” Scott says quickly. “Just leave it – so I can tell him the Kissing Booth proposals are off.”

“So you’re saying I shouldn’t ask him to do it?” Stiles raises his eyebrows. “You know it’s only got half the buzz it has on twitter because people think he’s doing it?”

Scott’s face betrays his inner turmoil. “Give him a couple days, he might change his mind.”

“The booth is in a couple days, dumbass,” Stiles says.

Scott shrugs and wanders off. Stiles tries and fails not to feel guilty.

Derek looks wary when he spots the note tucked into the handles of his Ducati later on. Stiles watches from behind a pillar while he reads the note – simple and to the point _, I’m sorry, from Stiles_ – and relishes the relieved, small smile Derek gives the note. He tucks it in his leather jacket and swings his leg over the bike to drive home.

Something in Stiles eases, a little. Whatever.

 

The Fall Festival is already lively when Stiles and Scott turn up on Friday night. There’s a rumour that the spiced punch has been spiked with whiskey and rum, as per tradition, but Finstock hasn’t realised and has been drinking since he turned up at 4pm. It’d explain why he’d boomed _Bilinski_ and _Delegatin’ Hale_ at Stiles and Scott on their arrival. Stiles is excited for when he inevitably throws up and/or passes out.

They tear up the tickets into little rectangles and put them in the Tupperware for Allison to manage. She’d graciously offered to help run the front of house while Stiles and Scott set up and kept the people ticking over backstage. Stiles gave her a begrudging thanks when she’d offered, and Scott looked like she invented the cure for cancer. God, the looks between them give Stiles cavities, honestly.

Stiles watches Derek wander round the other booths as it starts, and he wins a giant stuffed rabbit for Boyd’s littlest sister, Clara. He looks gratified when she beams up at him and Stiles refuses to feel anything fond about it. Refuses.

He saunters over to Derek eventually, once Boyd and Clara move on.

“That was a nice thing you did,” Stiles says. Derek looks mildly insulted. “I know you’re nice! I mean, that was a cute bunny, I’d have wanted to keep it.”

“Well, let’s see if I win you one later,” Derek grumbles. Stiles smiles fondly at his bitter, passive aggressive tone.

“I wanted to ask if you’d reconsidered doing the booth?” Stiles asks, watching how Derek rolls his eyes at the question.

“I’ve told you over and over again – _no_. Do you want me to say it in Spanish?”

Stiles can’t hear Derek speaking Spanish without going hot under the collar, knows this from many, many painful experiences at past family picnics and Christmases when the Delgado-Hales mutter in Spanish to each other, as is normal for the part-Hispanic family. Now is not the time to get the hots for Derek’s bilingual abilities, though. 

“It would mean a lot to me.” Stiles is forcing the words through his teeth at this point.

“The independent Stiles Stilinksi is begging someone for help.” Derek’s smiling now, his stupid good smile shining through and just mocking Stiles’s pain.

“It is what it is, I guess,” Stiles shrugs and tries not to show how much he’s annoyed. “Just thought it would’ve been nice to do something for people that care about you.”

He doesn’t wait to hear Derek’s response and heads off for the booth.

 

The line-up for their kissing booth is pretty great, if Stiles says so himself.

For the boys, they have Jackson, Danny, Isaac, and hopefully, a Derek.

For the girls, they have Lydia, Allison, Erica and Dani from Trig.

The lines of people are murmuring and excited and Stiles feels a nervous tingle at the sight of everyone lined up. He’s hoping for minimal drama, and maximum kissage. If people have to pay to make out with their spouses, so be it. Stiles is not above emotional blackmail and torture.

Saying that, the idea of Derek kissing a load of strangers makes him feel nauseous, but he just puts that down to brotherly affection going awry. It’s not like he ever wants to see Scott kiss anyone, jeesh.

Jackson Bitchemore is looking supremely satisfied, until Lydia strides to the opposite table.

“Stilinski, you never said _she_ would…” he loses his words and face descends into a scowl.

“She’s our most requested girl,” he grins. Lydia’s plan that this would bother Jackson has worked perfectly, shocking absolutely no one.

 

It's nearing the end of the night and they've made a fortune, but there's still no sign of Derek. Erica makes him sit down and drink some punch because he's even making her nervous.  

“I’ve got an idea,” Scott says, excited.

“Step up ladies, gents, we have a Delgado-Hale,” Stiles is grinning all huge because this is it for Scott, he gets all the ladies. But there’s ripping of tickets that have already paid for, thank God, and people storming off.

Allison swears from the front of the stage and storms on. Stiles thinks she might yell at everyone, but instead, seals her lips onto Scott’s and throws her arms over his shoulders.

Stiles feels this thrill for Scott that the girl he likes, likes him back.

Scott disappears with Allison, holding hands, and Stiles watches them go with a familiar fond kind of worry settling in his stomach. There probably won’t ever be a day when Stiles doesn’t worry about Scott getting hurt. 

The booth is winding down for the evening when Dani rushes backstage to hurl from her seven cups of punch and has to be taken home by her girlfriend. Erica and Lydia pop their heads out on stage and reel their necks back in looking supremely pleased with themselves.

“Oh, there’s only like one guy left out there,” Erica says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I really need to go, actually, my mom said I had to be home by eleven and I wanted to try the swim team’s booth.”

Stiles turns to Lydia and she smiles at him.

“My lips hurt, I don’t want to do another one,” Lydia says. “You’ll do it, won’t you, Stiles?”

He rolls his eyes.

“What’s going on?”

“We’re just tired,” Erica shrugs. “Besides, it’s your turn, you haven’t done any. You never know, this guy might just be the guy of your dreams.”

She singsongs the last part. She is enjoying this and that is a bad sign in and of itself.

Stiles feels like he’s being set up for something, but he doesn’t know quite what that is.

“Get out there,” Lydia orders.

“Wait,” Erica says, sliding on the blindfold. “Have fun!”

Stiles stumbles out onto the stage to mumbled chat from his classmates. He staggers out to the table and feels a set of hot, clammy (are they nervous or need medical assistance, he wonders) hands guide him behind the table that’s now his. There’s an anxious little huff from the intended kisser that makes his nerves settle in his stomach.

“Can you just hurry up?” Stiles snarks. “I haven’t got all century-”

The kiss cuts him off, with its owner losing his scoff of laughter in Stiles’s mouth, and oh. _Oh._

The kiss is warm and gentle and it builds up, slow but sure, to this crescendo of feeling. Scott said no French kissing but this swiftly dissolves into that, and it’s so frustrating because the guy won’t stand stay still long enough and his hands keep twisting in Stiles’s hair when he wants to hold them, dammit. His heart is burning, he thinks, this warm feeling that keeps radiating out in his chest, down to his fingertips, which are tingling where they are looped around this guy’s neck.  The guy’s hands are cradling his face like something valuable.

Then all warmth is gone ‘cause the guy has moved away, but not too far, because Stiles can feel his hot breath against the side of his face and he’s making shocked little sounds.

He doesn’t let himself hope for anything, but he pulls off the blindfold.

And it’s Derek.

They kiss again. And again. Until Stiles pulls back because he cannot think with Derek’s lips on his, it’s just mathematically impossible. His head hurts. He’s so warm.

The shock catches him for a second and then he realises that Erica, Lydia and possibly Isaac? Are screaming with total and complete abandonment and joy.

His classmates are clapping too, and Stiles is so confused.

Derek’s face is flustered and he looks a little horrified at himself. He stomps off stage and Stiles just retreats, backs away, from the volume of the crowd and the photo flashes.

He needs to speak to Scott.

He finds him and Allison at the skee ball stand. She's tossing up two shots and with a slip of the wrist, lets it bounce off the rim of the open circle. Scott laughs at her pout and of course, makes the next shot. Scott is great at scoring in lacrosse, after all. Stiles watches for a minute longer until Scott notices him. 

“Yeah, great job, babe,” he calls back at Allison, before ditching her to talk to Stiles.

“She’s only letting you win, you know that, right?” Stiles points out. Scott looks confused. “Scott, Allison is on the archery team...she’s got near perfect aim.”

Scott looks pleased and squishy.

“I kissed Derek,” Stiles says. He can’t wait any longer. It’s eating him alive.

“You what?” Scott’s smile has slipped off his face.

“He came up for the kissing booth, and I got him,” Stiles says. “Are you mad?”

“Well, you didn’t choose to kiss him, right?”

Stiles thinks hard about how they’d kissed, twice over, once he took the mask off. He slowly shakes his head. Lying is better, given the look on Scott’s face. He can’t know.

“Good, because I wouldn’t be able to be your friend if you were Derek’s anything. It’d be so weird.” Scott laughs and slaps his shoulder. Stiles doesn’t know if he’s being completely serious but he is so afraid that he is that he doesn’t even want to question it.

“You don’t mean that,” Stiles scoffs, rubbing a hand over the back of his head.

“Yeah, I do,” Scott gives him a look. “You made a promise to stay away from my family, as did I for yours. That means a lot. You’d be completely breaking my trust, dude.”

Stiles nods absently, his mind back on the way Derek held his face like he was something precious.

 

The festival winds down when Coach Finstock goes on the ferris wheel and projectile vomits all over a majority of the crowd below them. Once the ambulance drives away– words like drunk tank and stomach pumping were thrown about – the other teachers urge everyone to start tidying up. Lydia, Boyd and Erica help collapse the stall, while Jackson drawls that he just got a manicure, so sorry, he can’t help. Stiles isn’t even sorry when Lydia pinches his balls through his jeans.

He helps after that.

Of course, Scott was Stiles’s ride, so when he takes off with Allison, it leaves Stiles to run home on his own. He doesn’t mind, because Scott’s getting what he wants, and that is amazing.

Stiles doesn’t think about who he wants, because like Scott said, that’s not allowed.

The thing that isn’t allowed turns up just as the skies open and tip down with rain.

“Come on, Mieczyslaw,” Derek yells over the rain on his motorcycle, all perfect pronunciation; his mom was the last person to say his name, and it hurts somewhere deep in his chest. His mom probably taught Derek how to say it.

“Don’t fucking call me that,” he snaps, but he still climbs on the back of the motorcycle, taking Derek’s offered helmet from him, and sliding on his leather jacket. Derek’s now exposed to the elements.

“I’m pulling over, I can’t see in this rain,” Derek calls, only a couple minutes later. Stiles wonders if he’s even wearing his contacts.

They end up at the observatory by the graveyard. His mom is out there somewhere, not far from some of the Delgado-Hale family, he thinks.

“It should clear soon,” Derek mutters, looking out the windows, eyes unreadable.

Stiles doesn’t hesitate this time. He leans in and lets his lips touch Derek’s gently, just checking that he wants him. He thinks he knows, but he doesn’t for sure know.

Until he does.

Derek pushes back against him and gives as good as he got. They’re huffing annoyed breaths in each other’s faces and there’s some teeth involved against bottom lips and Stiles is far beyond so okay with it all, it’s insane. He’s kissing Derek and it’s everything he’d secretly imagined it would be like. His tongue is insistent and confuses Stiles’s brain and it’s so good.

“Derek, I told you, you can’t be up here.” the voice that separates them is stern enough that Stiles jumps from where he’s tucked into Derek’s arms, somehow. Somehow that happened.

“Thanks, Deaton,” Derek says, voice cracking in exasperation.

“Do you bring people up here?” Stiles demands.

Derek pinks up a little, and Stiles storms off.

He doesn’t have time for Derek to treat him like any other person at school. Because he likes him, maybe always has, he’s come to realise. He can’t just be a fuck buddy. He can’t just be some guy that Derek will look through on Monday morning in the halls at school. He doesn’t know what he expected, really. Maybe that Derek would take care of him. Stupid.

“Look, just take me home,” Stiles snaps on his way out the door. He has his eyes set on the motorcycle on the asphalt, thankfully drier now the rainstorm has stopped.

The journey home is silent and confusing, for Stiles. He hops off the back of the motorcycle and shoves the jacket and hat into Derek’s waiting arms. He storms off towards his house, there’s no other word for it. His head is a frustrated, hurt place right now. He feels like he’s irrevocably damaged his friendship with Scott, somehow. Let alone Derek’s friendship.

“Are you going to the beach party tomorrow?” Derek calls at his retreating back.

“Maybe,” Stiles says over his shoulder and slams the door in Derek’s face.

He doesn’t see the slow, pleased smile that spreads over Derek’s face.

 

He presses the door closed behind him with his back, enveloped in the cool embrace of his house. He can’t stop Derek’s face from floating about behind his eyes. He’s just there. Was he always there?

“Stiles,” his dad says from the armchair in the entrance hall, turning on a lamp.

“Jesus!” Stiles knocks over a plant pot and sends several sets of keys flying.

“I’d been led to believe he had a beard and sandals, actually,” Stiles’s dad shoots back.

There’s an awkward beat of silence where Stiles stews in his encroaching guilt.

“I thought Scott was supposed to give you a ride back?” he asks, nodding out the door.

“He got together with a girl,” Stiles shrugs, reminding himself that he needs to message Scott and check-in about how things are going with her. He also kinda doesn’t want to know, but hey, it’s his job as best friend. Don’t let your own blatant distrust get in the way of your bestie’s happiness, and all.

“That’s the only reason you’re on the back of Derek Delgado-Hale’s motorcycle, right?” Stiles’s dad has his stern, paternal face on. Pasternal, if you will.

“You - you saw that?” A weird laugh scoff emerges from his throat and his dad does not fall for it at all.

“Mmm hmm,” he raises a judgemental eyebrow at Stiles. “Make sure it’s the only reason, Stiles. You can’t afford a distraction this year.”

“I know,” Stiles is already tired of this conversation.

“You’ve got swim team, football, track, and now lacrosse,” his dad reminds him, and the list makes him feel abruptly exhausted, reminding him of the days ahead, all the hours and _hours_ he has to put in during the school week, before he even thinks about homework. “You can’t let your GPA drop in your Junior year.”

“I know, dad. It’s not going to.”

His dad nods, satisfied. “Go on, get to bed.”

He slaps his dad on the shoulder and escapes to his room. He definitely doesn’t get off furiously to the thought of Derek blowing him against the motorcycle. That doesn’t happen.

 

He gets a message to meet Scott for breakfast pancakes at the IHOP across town before the party. His dad drops him off on the way into the office to look at some work for what’s probably the twelfth time this week.

Allison is tucked into a booth, minus a Scott, but he gets it. Scott probably wants them to talk things out before anything serious happens with them. He appreciates the gesture.

“Allison,” Stiles nods, and slides into the booth.

“Stiles,” she shoots back, and seems to tense up a little.

“So, you and Scott, huh?” Stiles tries to grin. “That’s...new.”

Allison is silent, but nods at him, cheeks a bright red.

“I got the impression you’d liked him for a while.”

“Yes,” Allison’s mouth tightens into an awkward line.

“Is there something up with you?” Stiles sighs, aware that they’re about to have that conversation.

“What my aunt did… I didn’t want him to think that I was doing it out of pity, or because I felt bad. I do still feel bad, of course I do. But.” Allison tells Stiles, eyes painfully earnest. “But I’m tired of not trying with Scott because everyone else thinks it’s a bad idea. I want to be with him, I want to be his girlfriend, and I want to go to prom with him. I like him, Stiles, I really do. I care about him. All I’m asking for is a chance to prove myself. I think we could work.”

She stares him down. He can’t argue with that, really.

“If you try to hurt him, I’ll kill your entire family while you’re sleeping. And _I’ll_ succeed.” Stiles says.

“Sounds about right,” Allison’s smile exudes relief.

They bump fists over the table and the conversation turns to chat about the women’s swim team, which Allison’s been nominated to lead this academic year. The scheduling conflicts with archery and cheer so she picks his brain for a little while, given Stiles is part of so many extracurricular clubs, his timetable is very Hermione in third year Hogwarts.

By ten a.m., Scott turns up, without a shirt, and gets asked to leave by a waitress. They smuggle him bacon in the parking lot and Scott stalls the car twice while looking at Allison’s bikini/shorts combo before they get going to the Fall beach party that the Squad organise every year. Stiles hopes that’s not a prediction for Scott’s ability to get it up.

The beach party is split into a Juniors and Seniors affair. The Seniors throw around a football with a keg of beer further down the beach, and Stiles can see Derek talking to a few Varsity cheerleaders, which he refuses to feel anything over. Derek isn’t his date or boyfriend. He doesn’t get to feel jealous.

However, when one of the girls puts her arms around him, Stiles feels a bolt of something that is most definitely jealousy. Derek doesn’t just make out with him and then get with a cheerleader. It doesn’t work like that.

Stiles takes off his shirt and Erica accosts him with glitter and a paintbrush.

Her eyes are full of evil mirth while she puts the glitter all over him. She orders him to take off his pants, which he does, and he gets glitter all over his legs, too. She makes him bend over to do his lower back.

Derek gets hit, hard, in the arm by the football from where he’s staring, and Stiles doesn’t feel smug at all.

The Juniors have set up a slide and a massive table of beer pong. They lose Boyd, Erica, Danny and Isaac to the Seniors side, but they still reign victorious, of course.

The evening dissolves into more beers than Stiles can count, but he doesn’t get too drunk. He felt sick for three days after the Delgado-Hale party and he’s scarred from it.  

At some point in the evening, Ethan turns up and shoots Stiles a resentful look from over the campfire. Stiles can see Danny tense up and mutter something to Isaac. Scott’s still sitting with Allison near the shoreline, starwatching, and Stiles wants it to stay that way. Ethan’s still barred from school grounds of course, but this beach is free ground. Lydia, practically vibrating with rage, says that he wasn’t invited, but as he’s bought along another Keg, the good stuff this time, they can’t exactly ask him to leave while most of the Junior and Senior class are acting like he’s the second coming of Jesus.

Stiles stays with his group of friends and enjoys himself, laughing at their attempt to play Paranoia with an increasingly bothered Jackson. The last round everyone just keeps answering Jackson and his eyebrows are reaching new, unforeseen levels of distress.

Stiles heads up for another beer and finds Ethan holding court over the Keg.

Ethan crosses his arms, but Stiles ignores him and asks Greenburg for a cup.

He’s staring a hole into the side of Stiles’s face. Stiles just walks off, proud of himself for not saying anything. That is growth. 

 “Saw the video of you and Derek at the festival,” Ethan calls out, and there’s no one else this could be directed at.

He turns his back on him and puts the cup of beer in the sand.

An instant hush falls over the crowd and Stiles can see Derek’s head turn from where he and Boyd are talking, further out. Erica gets to her feet, but Isaac holds her back. His friends are all wearing identical expressions, even Jackson, of anger.

“Shut up, idiot,” Danny calls. Stiles feels a bolt of gratitude, but it does nothing but spur Ethan on, and give him a weird glint to his eye.

Stiles knows before it happens that the next comment will be below the belt.

“Doesn’t matter which dumb as fuck Hale gives it to you, does it? You’re just sloppy seconds for that family,” Ethan calls out, laughing. It’s loud enough for everyone around the fire to hear, even for Scott and Derek where they’re a bit further out. That’s the point.

Stiles doesn’t try to hold his temper, at all. He just sees red.

He uses a completely illegal football tackle and puts Ethan’s ass in the sand. Stiles winds Ethan so badly that he can’t get up while he bothers to hang around. He’s striding back across the sand dunes to the road before anyone’s even got time to react, though he hears Erica cackling with laughter and someone calling Ethan a jackass. He hopes it’s Danny. The dude deserves a sainthood for putting up with him.

“Stiles!” he hears the thump of feet on the sand behind him and doesn’t turn around.

“Just go away, Derek,” Stiles tells him without turning around. He can still hear his heartbeat thrumming in his ears and he wants to rip something to pieces, like Ethan’s face. Who the fuck does he think he is, God. Stiles will be nobody’s sloppy seconds. Who even _says_ that.

“Hang on,” Derek says, slightly out of breath. He eventually catches up to Stiles’s stride and walks by his side. Derek’s hands are tucked into his jean pockets and he looks worried.

“I just – who the fuck does he think he is?” Stiles bursts out. “He doesn’t get to treat people like that!”

“You need to stop defending mine and Scott’s honour,” Derek says. Stiles whirls round with narrowed eyes. 

“I have – I haven’t done that before,”

“Sure,” Derek says, and Stiles thinks that’s the end of it, up until, “Lee at baseball try-outs was a just a fluke then.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Stiles is panicking.

“Sure you don’t.” Derek sounds amused, and he tugs at Stiles’s arm to slow him down. “Hey. _Hey._ Thank you for defending my family.”

His eyes are intense as they survey Stiles, and he thinks there’s some hidden message in Derek’s words.

“C’mon, let me get you a taco bell,” Derek nudges him towards his motorcycle and Stiles will later tell himself that he at least put up a fight. He doesn’t at all.

 

They sit in the drive through parking lot in silence while they eat their burritos.

“Is this your make out spot?” Stiles asks, enjoying how Derek splutters out some rice from his burrito. “Or is that still the graveyard conservatory?”

“I just go there a lot,” Derek says. “It’s a good place to think and clear your head. It’s so quiet. I don’t bring anyone there. You know I haven’t seen anyone, since.”

 _Since Kate,_ they both know, and Stiles feels something settle. He was worried about Derek seeing other people and fucking around all the time. He likes that he doesn’t do that. He’s pleased, and he has no goddamn right to be, but he is.  

“I don’t like going there,” Stiles says, quiet. “It just reminds me of my mom.”

Derek nods, his face looking like he knows Stiles is telling him precious information. “I loved your mom, you know. She was my favourite aunt.”

This means a lot, Stiles knows, because Melissa has two sisters, and Talia has four.

“She loved you,” Stiles admits, a little bitterly, because he knows Derek will be smug about it. “You were her favourite.”

Derek preens only a little.

They fall into a companionable silence, and Stiles glances at Derek, to find him doing the same. They lock eyes and Stiles just wants to kiss him, hard, all of a sudden.

 “What do you want to do about this?” Stiles says, gesturing to the air between them. It may as well be crackling for all the electric tension in the air.  

Derek shrugs a little too quickly, looking embarrassed.

“Do you – like me? Like me, like me?” Stiles asks. His hope is choking.

Derek makes a strangled sound. “God, what are we, twelve.”

“You were nice when you were twelve, so clearly not,” Stiles points out. Derek rolls his eyes.

“Yes, I like you,” Derek admits, like it’s causing him actual physical pain, and wow, Stiles _can_ hear the Taylor Swift on his face. It’s precious.

“Oh my god – that’s why you told people not to ask me out,” Stiles realises. “That was still really douchey, dude.”

“I just wanted to make sure you were treated well if you wanted to be with anyone,” Derek has a look on his face like he wants to kill Stiles, instead. “A lot of people are assholes.”

“Fair,” Stiles inclines his head.

“But I’ve had a small – crush, I guess – on you, for a while,” Derek grits out. “I hated seeing Ethan do that to you and seeing you want to be with everyone, but me. I thought you just saw me as Scott’s grumpy older brother.”

“You are,” Stiles says, automatically, and Derek scowls. “But, yeah, I also think you’re nice.”

Derek gives him a sceptical look.

“No, you are!” Stiles insists, getting annoyed at Derek’s self-deprecation. “You’re kind to everyone, under the scowl, you’re a good brother, and probably the hardest worker out of everyone I know. Of course I like you.”

Derek looks a little disbelieving, but this pleased little smile is working over his face.

“You’re also, like, hot as burning and I’m so attracted to you,” Stiles admits.

Derek rolls his eyes and flushes a delicate pink.

“You – you too,” Derek mumbles. Stiles is reeling on the inside.

Derek, Scott’s insanely hot, unattainable, and annoying big brother, thinks he’s hot. The guy he likes thinks he’s hot. Unfathomable.

“You’ve got some – some sauce on your cheek,” Derek says. He makes an aborted move to wipe it off and Stiles just grabs his hand and holds it tight. Derek’s cheeks are flushed a pretty pink when he looks down at their linked fingers. Stiles thinks they fit well together.

“Can I – ” Derek asks, looking annoyed and embarrassed at himself.

“Oh, my god, finally,” Stiles says, and kisses Derek.

Their mouths fit pretty well together, too. Puzzle pieces, and all.

 ****

They head down to the coast that Sunday. Stiles’s mom used to swim here, and he thinks Derek remembers, one of those things that gets stowed away in his mind from their shared childhood. Melissa and Grace used to bring the kids on July 4thweekend, up until she got sick. They haven’t been back in years.

The tangy, sea salt air hits Stiles as he pulls off Derek’s spare helmet and swings off his legs off the bike. His hands are numb where they’ve been curled into Derek on the entire drive. Stiles thinks, if they’re going to be doing this, he needs to invest in a pair of gloves.

Derek looks like sex in his leather jacket and motorcycle helmet. Stiles doesn’t stop staring, even when Derek catches him, shameless. He grins toothily at Stiles from under his Ray Bans and his breath catches in his throat.

Stiles turns to look at the jade green, choppy waves under the rain heavy sky. He wouldn’t be caught swimming in that water, he thinks. It’d seem like a weird day to come to the beach when it’s about to tip it down and it’s the coldest day of the week so far, but Stiles has always loved the rain, especially when it just hits your skin in little, refreshing droplets. The beach curves down from the parking lot and to the left away from them, a c shape that ends with its curve out in the water.

“It’s beautiful here,” Derek murmurs, pressing up against his side, a delicious line of warmth that Stiles appreciates. “I’d forgotten just how gorgeous it was.”

“I like it,” Stiles shrugs. He suppresses a shiver because he did not think through leaving his jacket at home, a sweater is just not cutting it.

He’s busy berating himself silently when Derek drops his leather jacket on Stiles’s shoulders, and it’s a warming embrace. His smell envelopes him, clean, warm and a little spicy. Stiles may give a full-on shiver that’s nothing to do with the cold.

“Aren’t you gonna get cold?”

Derek shrugs, looking goddamn adorable with the tips of his ears flushing pink.

“Does this mean we’re going steady?” Stiles asks, and Derek chokes.

He gets shoved down a sand dune. 

They wander down the coastline, Stiles watching Derek more than anything else. Derek here is softer, quieter, but still his sarcastic self, and Stiles is relieved by that. Now they’re something, he didn’t want Derek to think he had to be nice to him, all the time.

“What’re your thoughts on _The Shining_?” Derek asks. His hands are tucked in his pockets and Stiles wants to hold his hand, but he’s not sure if he’s allowed to ask.

“The movie or the book?” Stiles responds. Derek’s lips twitch into this big genuine smile, Stiles would, if asked, classify it as a fond beam, and by god he wants to see it forever. He wants to be the cause of it, forever. So much for being casual.

“The movie,” Derek says.

“It pisses me off, is what it does,” Stiles says, his voice getting more irritated as he goes on. “The casting for Jack and Wendy is so fucking wrong, don’t even get me started. They’re supposed to be like these Varsity, All Star, prom king and queen types? Instead, they choose the guy just escaped from a biker gang, and a recovering drug addict recently free and traumatised from rehab. You just expect everything to go wrong, they already look damaged and – why are you smiling like that?”

“Nothing,” Derek grins. “Go on. What about the ending.”

“The most underwhelming, shitty cold ass thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Did Kubrick even read the book?”

They argue about the fire vs ice concept in _The Shining_ for a while (Derek likes the cold ending and thinks the fiery end is just cliché and overwrought which is so wrong) until the tide starts to come in. Stiles realises with a jolt that he left his phone at home, and just yelled, _I’m at Scott_ ’ _s_ at his dad before he left, but didn’t tell Scott what he was doing.

Long gone are the Saturdays when Scott-and-Stiles would work out, then follow it with a McDonald’s and video games. Scott’s busy with Allison, and Stiles doesn’t want to interrupt that, not that he’s really invited to. He gets that they’re new and need to learn about each other without a Stiles filter over things. He sometimes hangs out with Erica for CoD marathons on Saturday mornings, now, but it’s just not the same. He’s a little sick of third-wheeling her and Boyd’s cuddles. He always ends up with Erica’s hair in his mouth.

“Go on, try and start it,” Derek juts his chin at the motorcycle.

“I can’t start that thing,” Stiles steps back and trips a little. He rights himself and scowls at Derek’s shit-eating grin.

“That thing is a Ducati, and her name is Sheila,” Derek says, with solemn dignity.

Stiles presses his lips together and nods thoughtfully, like he’s not gonna change Derek’s name to Sheila in his phone when he gets home.

“I think you should try,” Derek’s eyes are burning on his skin. Stiles narrows his eyes.

“This – me doing this is a _thing_ for you, isn’t it?”

Derek rolls his eyes, but doesn’t deny it. It’s Stiles’s turn to grin.

 

Stiles gets the surprise of his life the day afterwards.

Monday mornings are the one day that he doesn’t have morning practice for anything, so he’s headed out to school at a normal time, just dicking around until Scott blows the horn to signal he’s outside. He’s got his head in the fridge, one slice of cold pizza in his mouth and reaching for the second, when his dad hollers for him from the garage.

“Happy belated birthday, or early Christmas,” his dad says, waving at the Jeep, which is usually hidden under tarp, but now rests out in the open, powder blue as ever.

Derek is standing by his side, looking really pleased with himself.

Derek’s eyes are twinkling with amusement at where Stiles is practically panicking at his presence so near his dad. Will his dad be able to tell that he and Derek are now a thing? Worst of all, Derek has a multitude of slightly dirty messages on his phone right now, from Stiles. Just inches from his dad.

“What is this?” Stiles asks, sounding like someone just strangled him.

“Derek’s offered to do a check up on your Jeep so it’s ready for you to drive, and I’m paying him as part of that Christmas present I wanted to get you but couldn’t while we were short staffed,” his dad explains. “What do you think?”

“I…don’t know what to say,” Stiles answers, honestly.  

“You deserve it,” Derek tells him, piping up for the first time. “Let me do this for you. Just say yes.”

Stiles looks at his eyes and the stubborn set to his jaw, and nods. He does deserve this.

They take the Jeep and fool around in a range of places, in several different positions, multiple times over.

Stiles sleeps better than ever. Mostly because he’s _exhausted all the time._

****

Stiles loses what’s remaining of his virginity in Derek Delgado-Hale’s bed, three weeks into their entanglement.

He gets to lie back while Derek slicks up his fingers and takes a delicate, amazing amount of time to prep his own ass for Stiles’s dick. His eyes are dark and excited and Stiles’s pre-come is in a tacky patch on his right thigh. He wants in so fucking bad.

Derek lies back and spreads his legs and asks Stiles to use him. He swallows his words.

He’s all nervous, desperate quick hips until Derek grabs his hips and slows him down, shows him how to make his hips flex in the way that feels good for them both. He wants Derek to come just from having a dick in his ass. He can’t stop rubbing up against his prostate when he finds it. He makes a point to grind against it until Derek is mewling, head thrown back on his pillows, and Stiles is so grateful that the house is empty because Derek doesn’t have to hide his sounds. Derek grits his teeth and calls Stiles a bastard.

Derek manhandles him onto his back and just bounces on his dick, his thigh muscles working while he rises and falls. He goes into this slow, dirty grind and won’t take his eyes off Stiles. His chest flushes with splotches of colour. Stiles gives this one massive thrust when he can’t take Derek’s teasing grind and that’s it, game over. Stiles gets to hear Derek gasp out his name in this breathy mangled way when he comes, and it’s the thing that tips him over the edge. Stiles comes so hard he whites out and comes to with the condom gone and Derek lying next to him, peppering little kisses to the edge of his jaw.

 ****

Stiles has been building up to this for a couple days now, has written several pro and con lists, and it’s decided. He almost fell asleep in his fruit loops at breakfast. He’s just too tired to function, officially. Adding Derek to his to do list is fantastic, amazing, so necessary to his happiness and year, he can tell already, but it’s exhausting, on top of everything he’s already doing. He needs to do this for his mental health and grades.

Stiles goes to Finstock before fifth period and he’s right where he thought he would be, writing up Plays in the locker room, and holy god, Play 105 looks like he’s got Boyd doing a flip.

“I want to quit the swim team,” Stiles says. Coach Finstock raises his eyebrows.

“Thank God, your schedule was giving me anxiety,” Finstock says, waving some pieces of paper. “Does this mean you can now make Thursday’s pre-pizza-party practice?”

“I mean – yeah? I think so?” Stiles stares.

Finstock scribbles something on the tiny whiteboard on his desk. He doesn’t seem to notice that Stiles is having a small existential crisis just off to his right until he makes a weird sound.

“What, Bilinksi?”

“I thought you would’ve refused to let me quit.” Stiles was expecting some mild guilt tripping. Or at least a threat to call his dad – not this mild support and level of chill. _Finstock_ is _chill_. 

“Kid, you were killing yourself trying to do everything,” Finstock shrugs. “You can sleep more. Those bags under your eyes look like you’ve been punched by Delgado-Hale. And this way you can get better at the sports you’re still doing, instead of half-assing them.”

“I’m not sure you’re supposed to curse,” Stiles points out.

Finstock pulls a _who are you going to tell_ face at him and literally turns his back on Stiles.

Sports do weird things to people.

 

On the plus side, that space in his schedule full of swim practice, hours spent in Beacon High pool and the Delgado-Hale pool, can be spent doing weird things, like homework and napping. And who’s he kidding, Derek.

Derek makes Stiles swear on his mom’s Jeep that he didn’t quit just to spend time with him.

Stiles promises that he was just bored of not having time to do homework and train at the gym. He does say that he can now afford to fool around with someone now, though. He has the time to date.

“Do you know anyone that’s single?”

Derek sulks for a solid five minutes until Stiles kisses his neck in that special place that makes him feel it in his toes and offers him a bag of hot Cheetos.

He grumps even as he accepts them and devours them.

 ****

One thing to know about Derek and Stiles, is that they both love spooning. Love it.

Stiles gets tired so quickly after sex, he’s sometimes fallen asleep before he’s pulled out of Derek. He usually wakes up, manhandled on his side, with Derek spooning the shit out of him.

Sometimes they just spoon and watch a movie, the laptop propped up on Derek’s nightstand. They take it in turns picking the films and this time, Stiles blames Derek for it, he picked a film with subtitles (he should’ve seen it coming) and his tired eyes do not make it through the entire movie. This isn’t usually a problem, because Derek’s house is empty, with his moms working stupid-long hours at the hospital and Scott hanging out with Allison near constantly.

On this occasion, however, they are in Stiles’s bed. Derek grumbled about not getting to hang out in Stiles’s bed at all, and so here they are. Ever so comfortable and exhausted. It’s a bad, inevitable combination. 

Stiles wakes up far too relaxed for someone with no fucking clue what time it is. He has Derek in his arms, for once, and he’s comfortable and so secure. Derek is cuddling one of his arms to his chest and smiling in his sleep.

Stiles revels in it for a moment and then notices the time on the clock by his bad.

It’s 7pm. His dad gets home at 7pm.

“Fuck, Derek, get up,” Stiles says, withdrawing his arm. Derek looks annoyed for a second and then he remembers where he is. “My dad’s due home now, fuck.”

He sees how it looks, ok? He sees that Derek looks flustered, his clothes are rumpled and his hair has clearly been slept on. In his house.

Derek  _hurtles_ , there's no other word for it, into his clothes and Stiles yanks on some sweats and an old, ratty tee. He would study in these clothes, that's not out of character. Derek looking flustered and red cheeked emerging from his bedroom, however, is brand new, and very out of character.

Derek smacks into his dad in the hall and falls down on his ass.   

“Hi, Derek,” his dad sounds unsure, and not even a little bit amused. “What’re you doing here?”

“Studying, but I need to go make dinner, for my moms, and Scott,” Derek says in one breath, staggering to his feet and looking down. “Bye, Stiles. Mr Stilinski.”

He scrambles down the stairs and out the door fast enough that he barely makes a sound on the stairs.  His dad turns to give him this look that just knows exactly what they were doing.

“We were studying and we crashed, that’s it,” Stiles says, and abruptly has to yawn.

“You don’t share any classes,” his dad points out.

“He’s helping me prepare for my Spanish exam,” Stiles says. “Is that ok?”

“Stiles,” his dad’s voice bears a warning tone.

“What do you want me to say? We fell asleep, I’m sorry. I’m just tired.”

“We talked about this thing with Derek Delgado-Hale, do you remember? We agreed that you don’t have time for a distraction this year,” his dad says, just a little too sharply.

“Derek and I aren’t anything, you’re assuming something is something when it’s nothing,” Stiles snaps back, exhausted.

“Really?”

“But it’s ok for me to be exhausted all the time from school and crying between classes.”

His dad looks shocked, like he didn’t know, which is bullshit. It’s not normal for anyone to do as much as Stiles does. He’s only human, at the end of the day.

“I dropped out of the swim team,” Stiles blurts.

His dad takes a beat to comprehend what he’s just said, and his face turns so disappointed. It kills Stiles.

“Why would you do that?” he demands. “Did Derek ask you to?”

“No, dad, no. I dropped out because I can’t do it,” Stiles laughs, hysterical. “I can’t go to the gym to prepare, I can’t do football practice and pep rallies and games, I can’t do lacrosse practice, games, track meets, swim team practice and meets, and maintain my 4.0, academic groups, do AP classes _and_ homework this year. I can’t do it all! I just can’t. I can’t.”

Stiles realises he’s hyperventilating too late, and then wham, bam, thank you ma’am, has a panic attack.

 

John asks Melissa to come over and check on Stiles once he’s held him and counted his breaths with him through the panic attack.

Stiles snuffles into the sofa, clutching a fluffy pillow, and his eyes on the _Friends_ episode on the TV. He knows his dad is mad but he just can’t handle it right now. His chest hurts.

“He hasn’t had a panic attack in years,” John murmurs to Melissa at the dinner table.

“Stress creeps up on you,” Melissa replies. “And we both know the boy has too much on his plate right now. Has for a while. Scott’s told me that he’s falling asleep at lunch since the lacrosse team bumped up their practice count, and he’s late to every practice, so Coach makes him do suicides.”

John blinks. It’s not like Stiles talks to him, but he’d have hoped that if he was struggling as much as it sounds like, he would’ve told him.

“Be easy on him,” Melissa murmurs. “He just didn’t want to let you down.”

She squeezes both men on the shoulder as she leaves.

Stiles doesn’t notice his dad sitting next to him until he turns the sound off.

“I’m not mad, Stiles,” his dad says. “Disappointed you didn’t tell me, but I understand why you felt like you couldn’t. I just want you to be the best you can be. I’m sorry if that came across like you had to do everything possible.”

“Do you want me to be happy, too?” Stiles asks.

“Of course.”

Stiles leans his head against his dad’s shoulder and falls asleep within minutes. Panic attacks always did exhaust him.

 ****

They’re very careful after that to stay clear of Stiles’s dad and his house, meaning that they come up with some very inventive date ideas far away from home. They both lie and say Stiles is with Scott, Derek with Boyd. Of course, Scott can’t know he’s Stiles’s excuse, but Boyd is fine to cover for Derek. They’ve been best friends since kindergarten when Derek sat next to Boyd and they swapped sandwiches without a word. Of course Boyd is going to cover for Derek and his first boyfriend, though Derek is prone to dropping whatever it is he’s holding when Boyd says the word.  

One of their dates is their running dates, where Stiles tries to teach Derek how to run over long distances. His stamina needs work so he ends up behind Stiles for ages, and he gets far too distracted by Stiles’s ass so they end up making out ferociously against trees more often than not, but they’re happy.

“Are you even trying to keep up?” Stiles calls back. He gets to a curve in the trail and turns around. Derek shoots past him in a dead sprint that is completely unfair. “Fucker!”

  
Derek’s cackle echoes back to him.

Of course, the baseball and basketball playing asshole knows how to sprint.

He catches up when Derek begins to tire, teeth gritting from the strain that’s going into the run. His legs are probably aching, Stiles thinks smugly. Some people just aren’t cut out for long distance.

“Nice job,” Stiles grins, only a little out of breath. Ok he’s a lot more out of breath than he’s looking, but he’s regulating his breathing. Derek looks like he’s about to puke.

“Shut. Up.” Derek pants, and stops with his hands on his knees. Stiles is too busy looking back and mocking that he doesn’t see the tree root stretched out across the path, and as such, goes flying across it.

He flies through the air and _skids_ , landing with a huge whelp, on his side.

Derek limps to his side and he’s still panting.

“You ok?” Derek’s eyebrows are doing concerned things.

Stiles stretches out his ankle and it doesn’t crack or pop, but it does ache slightly. He has a brief panic that this means the end of his athletic career until he realises it would hurt a lot more if he’d really damaged it.

“I think it’s just sore,” Stiles bites his lip and Derek helps him to his feet. He can put his weight on it and only uses Derek’s shoulder to prop himself up as an excuse to cop a feel.

“Come on,” Derek says, and bends down a little. Stiles leers. “I’ll give you a piggy back, you heathen.”

Stiles hops on and thrives on the little caring pat Derek gives his ankle. He presses a small kiss to the back of his neck. He finds that his ankle doesn’t hurt at all by the time he gets back to the car but Derek insists on driving anyway. Derek makes him ice it and take anti-swelling meds when they get back home, anyway. Sometimes he wonders how he got so lucky.

 

“Where are you putting the condoms?” Stiles murmurs between kisses. Derek makes an annoyed sound where he’s trying to kiss Stiles’s neck, like he’s ruining the mood, when he’s just trying not to get caught.

“Derek!”

“Say it again.”

“I knew you weren’t listening,” Stiles huffs. “Where are you disposing of the condoms?”

“Down the toilet,” Derek shrugs, and Stiles has a heart attack.

 

“I need cinnabon,” Stiles moans, with perhaps more vigour and enthusiasm than strictly necessary. Derek raises an eyebrow.

“Should I be worried that had more passion than you did earlier?”

Stiles sticks his tongue out. He always wants carbs, post sex, so sue him.

Derek looks a bit anxious as he lays on his back. Stiles rolls over and kisses his cheek.

“Earlier was…so beyond awesome, I don’t know what to say,” Stiles assures, and relishes the blush he gets in response. Making Derek blush with firm praise and assurance is his kink.

Derek huffs.

“I’ll buy you a cinnabon,” Stiles offers, and Derek sighs, put upon.

Only a minute later, he’s pulling on his jeans and offering Stiles a shirt to wear, since his was nominated for come-clean-up duty. His eyes focus on the hickey he’s just left on Stiles’s collarbone; where the shirt is a little more round necked than he’d usually wear, it’s just about visible. Stiles recognises Derek’s zoned out, turned on expression and smirks.

“Congratulations on your ability to damage my skin,” Stiles snarks.

“It’s not like you came when I did it,” Derek shrugs and slides his Ray Bans on, radiating smugness, completely ignoring Stiles’s outraged expression.

“That – that – is—” Stiles splutters. He can feel the blush on his cheeks has stretched, splotchy, to his chest.

“Maybe close your mouth before I put something in it,” is Derek’s parting shot out the door.

“You’re an asshole,” Stiles decides, and Derek’s laugh rings in the hall.

The mall is three towns over, and at nine o’clock on a Tuesday, they reason that no one should be there. Luckily, John, Melissa, and Talia are all on nights. Scott is taking advantage of this and going to Allison’s – her dad is a weapons dealer, which means a lot of business trips, leaving her on her own since her mom died a couple years back – so Stiles and Derek get the house to themselves.

“Do you wanna,” Derek doesn’t finish the sentence and nods to the photo booth tucked under the escalator. He looks at his feet and his face turns into this self-conscious, defensive scowl, like he thinks Stiles could even say no. It is goddamn adorable.

“Hell yeah, big guy,” Stiles claps him on the shoulder and shoos him into the tiny booth. It’s impossible for them to sit shoulder to shoulder without Derek hanging out the exit, so he perches on Stiles’s knee, his hand rested on the small of Derek’s back so he’s sat securely.

 _Photo 1_ reads the screen, and Stiles scrambles for ideas. Luckily Derek has thought of a few.

“Ferocious supernatural creatures,” he says firmly, and makes claw hands and bares his teeth at the camera. Stiles makes fangs with his fingers.

Derek’s too busy cracking up at him to get it together for _Photo 2_ , so Stiles thinks with a warm surge of something, that photo will be fond as fuck.

“Blue steel it,” Derek insists for _Photo 3_ , and sucks his cheeks in promptly.

Stiles pouts a little and turns his cheekbones to the camera. The flash is dazzling.

They’re pouting at each other in the two seconds between the next shot, and Derek leans forward and places a kiss so sweet that it aches,  _fuck_ , on Stiles’s lips for the final shot. Stiles doesn’t hesitate to nudge his nose on the pull back and earns that addictive smile from Derek.

The photos are, as predicted, great. The second shot is his favourite, Derek cracking up, his head tilted forward with this this small smile on his lips. Stiles doesn’t hesitate to tear the strip in half.

He holds both out to Derek, who takes the last two pictures, with their kiss.

They both tuck the photos in their wallets without any comment.

“Cinnabon?” Derek asks, hopefully, and Stiles melts.

 ****

By the first week of March, the Delgado-Hale plumbing system has been completely totalled, and the family has to use the Stilinski toilet and shower while it’s being fixed. The plumber’s very confused about how approximately one hundred condoms have created a giant plug in the system, and the blame falls on Scott’s shoulders, despite Scott and Allison not sealing the deal just yet. Scott is not pleased.

“I didn’t know that condoms could do that,” Derek hisses, while he’s waiting to use the Stilinski shower. Stiles shakes his head fondly, sometimes the similarities between Scott and Derek are so there, it’s obvious.

Stiles would be more annoyed about the loss of his bathroom to four people if he didn’t get to bone Derek in the shower as often as he does. Everyday, after his practice of the day, but before his dad gets home, he gets to fuck Derek up against the wall of his shower. At first, they’d slipped, but now, holy Jesus, they’ve got it down to an art. It’s the best relaxing stretch post practice. Stiles is sleeping better than ever.

“Hurry up, we’ve only got ten minutes,” Stiles mutters at Derek’s lips and he grins suddenly, bright and huge. It maybe definitely takes Stiles’s breath away. He’s so gone.

 

 _Be ready in ten,_ the text reads.

 _There’s a please in there somewhere :P_ Stiles shoots back.

 _Keep looking_ Derek replies, and Stiles grins stupidly at his phone. What an ass.

When he’s got his hands all over it twenty minutes later, he thinks again, _what an ass._

 

“Do you want to go out to dinner?” Derek asks next Saturday, while they’re still sweaty from the sex they’ve just had. He’s lying back on Derek’s bed, totally nude, and he thinks he’s hallucinated the question at first.

“You want to date me?”

“Stiles.”

“Wine and dine me? Cook then nook me?”

“Less and less with every second. What does nook even _mean_?”

“Knew it,” Stiles grins up at the ceiling.

“Derek, honey, are you in?” is the only warning they get before Melissa is turning the door handle. “Why is your door locked?”

Derek and Stiles meet each other’s eyes, totally panicked. Stiles doesn’t think and hurls himself under the gap beneath Derek’s bed. They planned for this, he is enacting Contingency Plan A.                 

The bed creaks when Derek hops off it and pulls on a shirt.

“Sorry, just getting changed,” his voice sounds suspicious as fuck. Stiles writes a mental note to go through Derek’s lying skills because they need major work.

“I just came up before work to say congratulations, I saw the Stanford letter stuffed in the side cabinet,” Melissa says dryly. “Why’d you try to hide it?”

“Mom,” Derek complains, sounding embarrassed as hell. Stiles is so thrilled for him that his face has turned up into this wide stupid smile. He can feel his dimples, for God’s sake. He reminds himself to get Derek a congratulatory cake, or something.

“We’re going out to celebrate on Saturday with the Stilinskis, no excuses,” Melissa says.

“I don’t want to tell people, mom.”

“The Stilinskis aren’t people, honey, they’re family.” Stiles gets this overwhelming warm feeling through his veins.

“Oh, and be nice to Stiles, I think he’s got a bit of a crush on you,” Melissa says, and he abruptly wants to be swallowed by Derek’s floor.

“Oh, really?” Derek asks, sounding supremely smug.

“Derek, don’t look like that,” Melissa says, sounding parental and terrifying.

“Like what?” Stiles can hear Derek’s shit-eating grin.

“Hijo, you used to be obsessed with him. I’m sure you wouldn’t want him to know that,” Melissa says sternly, and he can hear the door slam behind her as she leaves.

He pokes his head up and Derek looks _pained_.

“Never talk about it?” Stiles offers and Derek nods, abruptly relieved. “So, Stanford. Congratulations! That’s an insanely huge deal!”

Derek ducks his head, embarrassed. “I’m not sure what I want to do yet, but.”

“Their history program is incredible,” Stiles points out, and Derek gives him a hopeful smile.

“It’s what I want to do – something in archiving or antiques, I think. ‘M not sure though.”

“You’ll do amazing,” Stiles assures him, and Derek kisses the tip of his nose. They settle back into the warm sheets that smell like the two of them.

They lie side by side for a few seconds, before Stiles can’t help it.

“ _Why’re you so obsessed with me_?” Stiles sings, a la Mariah Carey, and Derek pushes him off the bed with a thump. Stiles is cackling too hard for it to really hurt, though.

 ****

They go to the drive-in one town over, because they both love the atmosphere, and the fact they can make out in a public space with the smell of popcorn in the air, and not get caught for it.

Derek pulls back for the final scene in _Pretty Woman._ He gives this quiet, pleased sigh at Richard Gere’s character climbing the flight of stairs for Vivian that Stiles is so grateful he doesn’t miss.

“It’s hard, you know, when your parents have this ultimate love story,” Derek says over the credits. “It’s difficult knowing you won’t ever be able to live up to it.”

“You can try,” Stiles tells him, and kisses him, trying to budge that sad, resigned look on his face. Derek feeling sad should be an illegal event, punishable only by kisses and French fries.

Derek stares at him with this wide-eyed look and his face is so open that Stiles doesn’t know how to handle it.

“What?” Stiles laughs and steals a handful of Derek’s popcorn.

 

Stiles and Derek plan another date night the following Friday, without any conversation. After some googling on Stiles’s part, they go out to a Chinese restaurant that they don’t realise turns into a bar in the evening.

They play Ed Sheeran and Stiles drags Derek out onto the dancefloor to sway, Stiles fighting the urge to laugh at the other couples. But Derek is quiet, his face tucked into the curve of Stiles’s neck.

Stiles just focuses on the feel of Derek in his arms while they sway to Tenerife Sea.

“You okay?” Stiles murmurs into Derek’s hairline when the music goes into something poppy.

Derek nods and if Stiles holds his hand extra tight on the way back to the Ducati, no one else needs to know.

It’s all going so well, until it’s not.

Stiles trips over in the garage while he’s watching Derek work on the Jeep, and brains himself on a spanner, he thinks. He blacks out a little and cuts up his forehead. Derek panics and takes him to the hospital where his moms are both on shift.

He doesn’t listen to Stiles’s comments that it doesn’t look great for them. Being together.

Saying that, he’s puked, the room’s spinning, there’s a solid chance he’s not making any sense at all. He might not even be speaking English.

Derek asks the nurse at the desk for his mom. The nurse’s face lights up when she sees someone with Derek and she honest-to-god scurries off.

“Derek, Stiles,” Melissa says, in surprise. “Oh _boy_.”

She takes Stiles into a private room and touches his head while he groans and Derek gnaws off the skin on his knuckles in anxiety.

“I’m going to page your mama,” she murmurs to Derek, and gives him a half-hug.

“Why? Why does he need to see neurology?” Derek asks, panicked.

“I want to be sure he doesn’t need a CT scan or anything,” Melissa soothes, putting a hand on his cheek. “I want to be sure.”

They sit in companionable silence while Melissa’s pen scratches the paper on her clipboard.

“How did he get this?” Melissa asks.

“I was working on the Jeep’s transmission in the garage and I asked him to pass me a wrench,” Derek flushes with colour. “He tripped over and knocked his head on the tool box. He passed out and then puked everywhere. Oh, shit, I didn’t clean it up.”

“It’s ok honey, you did the right thing bringing him here,” Melissa says. “Stiles, wake up, don’t grump at me, kid. I don’t want you to die in your sleep, so sue me.”

There’s a beat of where Stiles grumbles about cruelty.

 “So, you two’ve been spending a lot of time together lately, hmmm?”

Derek looks like he wants to crawl into a hole to die rather than talk about this. “Mom.” She can hear the anguish in his voice.

“I’m pleased, you know I love him,” Melissa shrugs, trying to keep her voice neutral. “Don’t tell your Aunt Martina though, you know she hasn’t forgiven him for the pecan pie last Thanksgiving.”

“I remember that,” Talia chuckles, swanning through the door.

Derek looks like he wants to die.

“What’s wrong with this little one, then?”

The 6-foot little one gives her a dark look.

Melissa explains and Talia hums, producing a small flashlight from her pocket. She looks in Stiles’s eyes and tests them and asks about details, like the president, his locker combination, and the birthdates of all her children, even Scott’s. He gives her a dark look at this.

“You haven’t broken the skin, I think you should be fine with a Tylenol and an ice pack,” Talia says, with a smile and a ruffle of his hair. Stiles beams at her. “I think Derek should probably take you home now. And remember, no roughhousing for about 24 hours, but don’t sleep for longer than 2 hours at a time, either.”

“Mama oh my god,” Derek says, mortified. She grins at his discomfort and pecks his cheek before kissing Melissa fully.

“Back to the boring,” Talia pouts and slinks out. They can hear her yell _I love you_ at them through the door.  

“Go wait in the waiting room for a little while, just in case it gets worse,” Melissa shoos them out with Derek clutching her vending machine card. He knows what Stiles needs.

Stiles beams up at him when he hands over Reese’s cups and a Gatorade.

And then they wait.

Stiles leans his head up against Derek’s shoulder.

He doesn’t think about it often – doesn’t let himself – but it’s so great being able to be openly affectionate with Derek in the middle of the day, in town. Their dates are so often two towns away, in the evening or late afternoon, in the dying daylight, or by candlelight (because Derek’s romantic as fuck) so Stiles doesn’t get to do normal PDA. They have date night PDA, which isn’t excessive, because the pair of them like keeping their stuff for them only, but this is soft. This is comfortable. This is Derek slinging an arm round Stiles and taking lots of little glimpses at him to check he’s okay until Stiles elbows him in the ribs and grumps at him to stop worrying.

“Thank you for bringing me,” Stiles says, and bumps his nose against the crook of Derek’s neck.

“Wanted to be sure you’d be okay,” Derek shrugs the Stiles free side of his shoulders.

“Your moms are amazing, just so you know,” Stiles tells him and Derek smirks.

“They know.”

Derek kisses the uninjured side of his forehead with all the gentleness he can muster. Stiles smiles to himself, pleased. It’s not very often he gets to actively snuggle with Derek in public and by god, he will enjoy it while he can.

“What the fuck,” he hears, and Scott’s standing over Derek’s shoulder.

“I - I can explain,” Stiles says, and then he just. Stands there. In silence. Because he can’t explain what this is, he doesn’t even know what he is to Derek. He doesn’t know what to say.

“You said you didn’t really kiss, back in the Fall carnival!” Scott exclaims. “What is this?”

“We’re just fooling around,” Derek shrugs, and wow, that stings. That stings a whole lot. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean anything.”

This is the opposite of the answer Stiles would have given, and maybe Derek thought Scott would appreciate it, but he so clearly doesn’t, when he punches Derek in the face with a surprising amount of force. Derek is on Scott in an instant while Stiles can’t breathe and pinning his arms to his side. Derek keeps saying into his ears, again and again,

“Calm down, Scott.”

Scott squeezes his eyes shut and Stiles can see him counting down from ten.

Melissa is walking from the corner with her hands over her mouth. Stiles thinks he can see the disappointment in her face from here. He’s pitted the Delgado-Hale brothers against each other. This is his fault.

Derek lets him go and Scott turns tail and runs.

“Scott,” Stiles yelps, and stumbles after him.

“Wait,” Derek grabs his arm.

“I don’t matter, remember?” Stiles says, shrugging like it’s not important, because he doesn’t rank at all for the one guy he _wanted_ to matter to. They hadn’t talked about this, but he hoped, for fuck’s sake. They acted like they were together, and Stiles wanted them to be.  “Do me a favour, lose my number, and don’t fucking speak to me ever again.”

He shucks off Derek’s leather jacket and lets it fall to the floor. He will not cry. He won’t.

He catches up to Scott in the parking lot, but not before he drives off without a background glance.

Derek’s motorcycle is gone by the time that Stiles gets back to the front of the hospital.

He has to call Lydia for a ride home. She doesn’t question him crying in the car, thank God.

 ****

The final few weeks of the semester are empty without Scott and Derek.

Derek takes the last three weeks off, and there are mutters about him not graduating by vindictive members off staff (looking at you, Harris), but his GPA is set in stone, at this point.

Scott doesn’t talk to Stiles. His eyes slide past him in the halls and he just sits there in grumpy silence in the classes they have to be together in. Harris makes a couple jokes about divorce that fall flat and Stiles tells Harris to shut the  _fuck_ up, in the middle of class in front of everyone. Scott watches with a glimmer of interest while Stiles gets written up for detention.

On the first Day of Silence and Absence, Erica, Lydia, Jackson, Danny, Isaac, and Boyd without any explanation, come and sit down next to him at lunch. They talk loudly and brightly about stupid things, like the football game on Thursday night, and let Stiles wallow in his feelings. Jackson rolls his eyes at him but still lets him have his tater tots. That is friendship.

Scott and Allison are outside, talking intensely. Allison shrugs at him with a sad look when he catches her eye.

He puts all his effort into his extracurriculars until Coach Finstock is talking to him about perhaps going to anger management because he needs to be gentler at practice; they need all the players, and Stiles has accidentally hospitalised three this week alone, and that’s just in football. There’s talk about Matt on the lacrosse team needing surgery for his balls.

Two weeks goes by, and Stiles doesn’t think about how his long-distance times have got slower, and he’s miserable after every single school day.

It is very quiet and strange without the Delgado-Hales in his life, and he hates it.

Stiles is stewing in his bed on a Friday night, very pointedly thinking about how he’s not got any plans with Derek. Friday was date night and it feels wrong not going out to dinner and a night time beach stroll. He hates it.

“You’ve got a guest,” his dad calls.

“Scott?” Stiles sits up in bed so fast that he almost hits his head on the ceiling.

Melissa Delgado-Hale walks through his door.

“Hi,” Stiles says, shifting back. It’s then he realises how badly he needs to shower.

“How’re you doing, kid?” She sits on his bedsheets and looks around his bedroom. It’s been years since she came in.

“I’ve been better,” Stiles can hear the surliness in the words. “Derek’s just taken off, and Scott’s not talking to me. I’m sorry for them having that fight.”

“It’s not completely your fault, honey,” Melissa says. “You should’ve been honest with everyone, just from a position of safety. No one knew where you were at any point. What if you’d both gotten into an accident sooner?”

“I’ve been so stupid,” Stiles admits.

“Love makes us do stupid things, I get it,” Melissa waves her hand.

“Do you think Scott will ever forgive me?” Stiles asks.

“I was friends with your mom for twenty years but if you think we didn’t fight sometimes you’ve got another thing coming. We always forgave each other.”

 ****

Prom has creeped up on Stiles.

He doesn’t even remember it until a Freshman asks him to it, and he turns her down without even thinking about it. Lydia berates him about his lack of tact when she finds out, but her eyes soften when his eyes settle on Scott and Allison. She has a sign next to her with Scott’s writing on it, and she’s covered in glitter. Clearly, he’s asked her to prom.

 And Stiles wasn’t there to see it or take photos like they’d always planned.

All of a sudden, Stiles needs to speak to Scott so badly that he can’t breathe.

“I’m sorry, Lyds, I need to go,” Stiles says. He paces in the men’s bathroom for the rest of lunch, just formulating what he want to say in his head. Scott has to forgive him. He has to.

He goes straight to Scott’s locker, aware he’ll probably be late for last period.

Scott has his back to him.

“Scott, I’m sorry I broke your rule about dating Derek,” Stiles says. Scott’s shoulders tense up and doesn’t turn around. “I know I broke your trust and it won’t happen again. I just… really, really liked your brother and needed to give it a shot to see if we’d work. I’m sorry I did it and didn’t pull it together to tell you when I should’ve.”

Scott turns around to stare at him.

“I brought you something,” Stiles adds, and whips out the tub of Ben & Jerry from his backpack. “I’ve had it for two weeks, so it’ll be pretty gross, but uh. I’m sorry. I love you, Scott.”

Scott throws his arms around his neck and the ice cream clatters to the floor.

“Does this mean you like me again?”

“I never stopped, you little asshole,” Scott sniffs, like he’s crying, and Stiles is glad he’s not the only one.

 

“You have to come to prom with me and Allison,” Scott insists during their Scott-and-Stiles-made-up Taco Bell.

Allison grins at him and nods and Stiles is so happy to be friends with Scott again that he doesn’t even pause to think about how awkward it’ll be to be the only single one in their group of friends going to prom. Isaac and Danny are now a sarcastic, judgemental, delightful thing, meaning that Stiles is constantly nine wheeling their group of friends. He goes to several prom dress fitting sessions with the promise of video game sessions with Erica as recompense.

 

Derek still hasn’t come home, but he’s sent Melissa and Talia messages to say he’s ok.

Stiles hasn’t heard anything, but he supposes Derek’s just doing what he told him to do, and never speaking to him again.

 

Stiles studies at Lydia’s house the Thursday before prom.

“You bought five prom dress options,” Stiles repeats, spinning around slowly in her room. Rich, heavy dresses hang on each wall, each with their own pair of shoes and accessories below them.

“Quiet,” Lydia hisses, closing her door. “My mom can’t know I maxed my credit card.”

“How did you even do that?”

“Wasting my money on my idiot friend and getting him a suit tailor made,” Lydia jerks her thumb at the suit bag hanging in her wardrobe. He’d assumed it was for Jackson.

“Aw, Lyds, you didn’t need to,” Stiles says. “How do you even know my measurements?”

“Please,” Lydia looks almost insulted. “Try it on for me?”

Stiles saunters back into the room wearing the suit and Lydia claps her hands together.

“I’m a genius.”

“We knew that already,” Stiles points out. “You submitted part of the Chemistry textbook back to the manufacturer for corrections in your first week as a freshman.”

“There were multiple spelling mistakes and an incorrect equation.”

“Never change.”

They work for another few hours until Stiles gets hungry and they order in.

Stiles calls his dad to tell him that and weirdly, hears his dad’s unmistakable ringtone for him, tiptoe through the tulips.

“I’m picking up a friend for dinner,” his dad says gruffly, and this is brand new information for Stiles. His dad has friends that aren’t Talia and Melissa.  “Why, where are you?”

Stiles swings the door open and catches his dad on the phone. He looks very confused.

“Oh, hell,” his dad says, voice echoing through the line.

Lydia’s mom totters out into the hall in heels, calling up the stairs for Lydia, until she realises the scene in front of her.

“John,” she looks pleased. Lydia makes a retching sound at the back of her throat. “You’re early.”

Stiles raises an eyebrow. “You’re – dating?”

“Yeah and we’ll be late for our reservation,” Stiles’s dad says. “We’ll talk about this at home.”

“No, we’ll never discuss this,” Stiles says.

“Are you two ok?” Lydia’s mom looks concerned.

“Traumatised.” Stiles and Lydia say at the same time. They shudder.

They collapse against her bedroom door and scream into the void for a long time. It turns to laughter eventually.

“I didn’t realise she was dating yet,” Lydia murmurs. “I hadn’t asked.”

“They could be good for each other,” Stiles says.

“It’ll be good for them,” Lydia agrees. “Now, onto your dating life.”

Stiles makes a pained sound. “Non-existent, Lyds.”

 “I know you’re not ok,” Lydia says, her eyes scanning Stiles’s face. “But you will be. You don’t need him around, Stiles, you are _strong_ and independent.”

“I want him around, Lyds,” Stiles sighs back. “I don’t need him, but I want him.”

She frowns.

“Well, these things work out if they’re supposed to. What will be will be, I really believe that.”

Stiles makes a thoughtful sound, his throat feeling stuck together.

“Now, back to math,” Lydia says, sounding stern. He got a 94 on his last exam and this is apparently unacceptable. 

 

Stiles stares at his reflection in the mirror for a long time before prom. He fills out the suit well, and he thinks, all of a sudden, he looks more grown up than he has for a long time.

There’s a beep of the car outside and hurtles down the steps.

His dad’s holding a small box to his chest.

He peels open the lid and inside is a picture of him as a baby and his mom. It says, _happy 17 thbirthday, baby, _in her scrawl, and Stiles wants to cry, so he does, just a little.

“This is great, dad.”

“She always told be you’d be amazing, and you’re better than that, kid. I’m so proud of you.”

They have a solid hug for a while and Stiles snots all over his dad’s shoulder.

The limo horn blares, loud and obnoxious, and Stiles's dad wipes the snot from his face with his handkerchief, just like when he was little. He makes Stiles pose and catches it with his shitty, too old iPhone 4, but he looks pleased as punch.

“Go on, get out of here.” He shoves him to the door, sounding gruff. Totally not crying at all. 

 

“Hey asshole,” Jackson calls down the moon roof. “Still dying alone?”

“Still suffering from a lack of personality, I see,” Stiles replies.

Jackson rolls his eyes. “You’re a dumbass.”

“You’ll only ever be the second most attractive guy at school.”

“Take that back!”

His friends are all in the back of the limo, except Boyd and Erica, who'd dropped out last minute with no explanation. It's a topic for hot debate in the limo but they all eventually come to the conclusion that Erica's makeup and hair time ran over, and they were too late to make their collection time. The theory is disproved when Boyd and Erica beat them to the front gates. Erica keeps twisting her hands together like she's worried about something. Her smile isn't all there when she smiles at Stiles, and Boyd keeps looking around, distracted. 

The prom is being held in their gymnasium, and people keep on approaching Lydia to say well done for manning the decoration committee with a reign of terror.

They’ve decorated the hall with photos from the year and Stiles is chagrined to say that there’s a solid chunk of people he could swear he’s never seen before tonight. His favourite shot is he and Scott chest bumping in the cafeteria, and the one of him and Derek. Some bastard’s blow up the picture of Stiles and Derek making out at the Fall Festival. Something in his chest seizes at it.

They walk through the photo trail until they end up back at the dancefloor.

Scott’s mouth drops open out of shock, and Stiles is too busy twirling Erica round until Boyd squeezes his arm and nods at the stage.

Derek is on stage. He thinks he sees Derek ask the tech to turn the lights on him and then there’s a blinding light, and the spotlight is literally on him. His heartbeat is so loud in his ears he really can’t hear anything at all, but he knows that people will be murmuring to each other as Derek strides towards him from the stage.

Stiles panics. He’s got the entire student body watching him. Derek knows that this kind of attention makes him feel awkward and uncomfortable. He knows. So why is he doing this?

“What’re you doing here?” Stiles asks. “You just – you just left, Derek. You left. Have you even spoken to Scott yet?”

Derek’s head swings to see Scott in the audience, looking upset. He nods at his brother.

“Stiles, I love you. And I’m standing here in front of everyone and I’m telling you, I love you.”

Stiles is deathly silent, but his tears start to well up. He knows Derek can see them. Everyone can see. That’s the issue. He turns on his heel and walks away, very quickly.

He needs to get out of the vicinity and on the open road before the panic attack hits. The limo driver drops him off at his house for fifty bucks and he's in his Jeep in a blur that he won't remember later.

He gets on the highway before he has to pull over, and very carefully, loses his head.

 

Stiles turns the Jeep’s headlights off and watches the ocean curl onto the beach, the water a glassy blue under the sky full of stars. He cranks the window open and just one breath of that air means that his breathing evens out.

He stumbles down the sand dune Derek pushed him down, a lifetime ago.

He sits on the sand and just breathes in time with the waves. It’s relaxing and he feels like he’s just understood his mom and her anxiety a little more. She probably felt this place calmed her down and he feels like he’s connected with her just that bit more.

He’s not sure how long he’s there when he hears Derek call his name from just behind him.

“Gah! You make no sound when you move, what are you, a Prius,” Stiles says, jumping. His heartbeat is going a mile a minute and that’s only partly due to the shock. “How’d you know I’d be here?”

Derek shrugs. “It’s our place. I hoped it might mean you hadn’t given up on me, just yet.”

They fall into silence.

“I’m sorry for saying that in front of everyone, but I’m not sorry for what I said,” Derek says. “Because I do love you – I meant the exact opposite in the hospital. I thought I’d been obvious enough that I cared about you more than anything, that you would recognise it as a lie, instantly. I didn’t say the words, but I hoped that I’d shown you in so many ways. I hated when you thought that you didn’t matter to me, when it’s the opposite.”

Stiles blinks at him.

“I am in love with you,” Derek says. “I want everything with you. I want to be your boyfriend and I want us to be a public knowledge thing. I want to wear your number to games, even lacrosse.”

Stiles thinks his mouth is open. Derek smiles at him, slow and careful, like he thinks Stiles will want to run.

“I love you, too,” Stiles says. “But how do I know you won’t run again?”

“I can promise, but I’ll show you. Please trust me.”

Stiles thinks hard and lets the honest answer slip through his lips.

“I do trust you.”

Derek takes a solid step forwards until they’re only a few centimetres apart.

Derek’s smile is lost in his mouth, and it’s as easy as that, the credits roll, the music swells.

Stiles is smiling so hard his face hurts and Derek keeps kissing his mouth over and over again. They hold each other for a long time.

 

Scott is waiting outside the Delgado-Hale residence when they pull up in the Jeep. Turns out, Derek begged Boyd to drive him to the beach to try and get Stiles back.

Scott’s arms are crossed, and his expression is unreadable, but Stiles thinks he’s got anger bubbling just under the surface. It’s the first time that he cannot read Scott like a book.

“I’m in love with him Scott  _and_ I love you and you can’t ask me to choose between you because I need you both,” Stiles starts, deploring. “I need you, Scotty, and I need him. He makes me happy and fucking hell, without him, I’ve been goddamn miserable. I need you because you fucking make up who I am. I can’t be without either of you assholes. I’ve tried. 0 out of 10 would not recommend to a friend.”

“I thought you jerks were just fooling around, I didn’t realise you were in love,” Scott squeals.

Derek shakes his head and Stiles nudges his arm. Don’t antagonise Scott when he’s in the middle of an epiphany.

Scott bounces on his feet and throws his arms around them.

“Don’t hurt him!” He points a warning finger in Stiles’s face.

“I’m so gone on the guy, Scott,” he admits, feeling a stupid fond smile spread across his face. Derek ducks his head to hide his face but he’s pretty sure his expression is just as stupid.

Derek’s hand seeks out his and they squeeze each other’s fingers.

Scott beams at them both.

 ****

_3 months later_

The Sherriff claps a hand on Derek’s shoulder.

“Take care of yourself, kid,” he says, pasternal face back on.

Derek hugs him and he wanders to the Delgado-Hale house, leading a sobbing Melissa by the arm. Talia and Scott have already gone inside due to their ‘allergies’. Stiles, on the other hand, cried last night in the bathroom while Derek slept, but his emotions are feeling jagged, cut off, and he could burst into tears, he could just hug Derek for a long time. It’s a tough call.

They stand and stare at each other for a beat or two while the sun beats down on them.

“Goodbye, I guess,” Stiles says, scuffing his shoes on the asphalt of the Delgado-Hale drive.

“Stiles,” Derek says, his face a little sad, but mostly pleased. “You’re coming up next weekend and you’ve got a key for my apartment. You’re looking after Sheila. You have my leather jacket.”

“And?” Stiles asks, his breath caught in his throat.

“It’ll never be goodbye, for us. Not ever.” Derek looks so sure and almost a little offended that the word goodbye even passed Stiles’s lips.

“You can’t promise that,” Stiles says, his heartbeat thudding. “Long distance is—”

“I’m one hour down the road. You have a _key_ for my apartment, you picked out my bedsheets and you _know_ you’re welcome at any time. You’re best friends with my roommate’s girlfriend.” Derek’s face is incredulous.

“Point.” He does love Erica.

“I am in love with you,” Derek has his hands on Stiles’s face and he’s tipping his head up so he has to meet Derek’s eyes. They are ferociously intent and serious. “And I am going to miss you so much. We can do this. We’re going to do this.”

Stiles nods. They can.

 ****

_8 Years on_

Stiles blinks awake, sweating. It’s November, it shouldn’t be this warm.

However, it’s November, with a Derek Stilinski-Delgado-Hale plastered all up his back, with thick bed sheets and the heating on already, because Derek worries that Stiles gets cold easily. Just because he has to carry an extra hoodie in the police cruiser to drape over himself while he’s waiting on shift doesn’t mean he’s cold all the time.

“Why do you wake up like we’ve got work even on the weekends,” Derek rumbles in complaint, the sound coming warm from his chest, and he wraps his limbs around Stiles tighter, like the cutest octopus that’s ever existed.

“Autopilot, sorry,” Stiles shrugs, and displaces Derek a little. He makes a half-hearted growl. It’s adorable. He wonders sometimes if he’ll never not find Derek completely adorable. “I’ll make breakfast.”

“Stay,” Derek nudges his wedding ring against the side of Stiles’s face, a fond habit that will never not make Stiles’s insides melt. But bacon will wait for no man, so he kisses his hand, and slides out of the sheets.

He pads out to the kitchen and to get there, he gets to walk through their hallway of memories. Framed pictures of Derek graduating from Stanford, and failing to throw and catch his cap, Stiles somewhere in the audience radiating with pride and telling everyone that his boyfriend is _graduating_. Then there’s Stiles graduating summa cum laude from Stanford too, and Derek crying in the ceremony, Scott doing the bunny fingers behind his head.

Derek standing in the library where he works with his library friends, in the next shot, focused on a scroll on his desk, and the third, him standing with his employee of the year card after being promoted to run the archiving team. There are shots of Stiles in the police academy, clambering over an assault course with his teeth gritted, a blurry Allison in the background. There’s Allison and Stiles grinning hugely in their cop car, partners, on their first day. The camera just catches a glimpse of their ironic Krispy Kreme box that they devoured to themselves in two hours. 

There are so many shots of Scott clutching puppies and kittens. The guy is a vet and literally heals puppies for a living. The effort it’s taken Scott to get to owning his own clinic is ridiculous, and he works ridiculously long hours. Stiles and Derek are very proud shareholders.

There are shots of Laura in action in federal court, looking fierce and beautiful. There’s Stiles, Scott, Derek and Cora wearing shirts with Laura’s face on outside the courtroom and Laura looking like she’s torn between wanting to kill them for embarrassing her, and laughing.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

There’s the shot of them from Boyd and Erica’s wedding three years back, throwing some shapes on the dance floor. There’s Erica ripping her own dress on her heels during Gangnam Style and Boyd’s grinning face coated in the white frosting from his cake. Next is Scott and Allison’s wedding, only a year after, and Scott’s crying face when he sees Allison walking down the aisle towards him. The photographer caught Derek and Stiles hiding under a table and crying into a bottle of whiskey between them. Cora and Ciara’s commitment ceremony in Argentina is on the wall, but all Stiles remembers is a lot of tequila, and eating out Derek for hours when they got back to the hotel.

Then, just over two years ago, is their own wedding on the beach. Derek had Boyd and Isaac as his best men, while Stiles had Scott, Erica, and Lydia. The photos are black and white shots from the reception, where the guests are packed around a fire, one of Jackson rolling his eyes at some joke that Erica’s just made, at his expense, probably. Talia and Melissa holding hands while they sway to the music from the boom box, and Stiles’s dad dancing with Lydia’s mom. Stiles and Derek snuck away in the evening for In-and-Out burgers and sex in the parking lot, but there’s only a blurry photo of Derek mid-bite of a fry to commemorate that that happened.

July 4thfrom 2 years ago, Stiles dumping Derek in the ocean, laughing so hard that he tripped in himself. He lost his Ray Bans to the ocean that year.

He comes back into their bedroom carrying the bacon sandwiches, and Derek’s fallen back asleep. He sets the sandwiches on the night stand from Derek’s teenage bedroom. In all honestly, he’s surprised the thing is still standing after he fucked Derek up against it last night.

He spends a moment relishing that this is his life, before he dives back into bed to annoy Derek awake.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings: brief reference to a homophobic comment from a baseball player, references to two panic attacks, but again not gratuitously, some major douchebaggery from Ethan in the form of an ass slap and a sexist comment, and some light violence within as per the film. If anyone wants anything clarified further please do just let me know!


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